


A Series of Malfoy Events

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Malfoys Being Malfoys, Quidditch, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 02:43:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 59,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4162641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry saves Draco’s life. That should be the end of it. Except it isn’t, because Draco keeps coming up with crazy things—and Harry goes along with it because he can’t <i>wait</i> to see what Draco’s going to come up with next. Updated every Thursday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who's Allowed to Save Draco Malfoy's Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fluffy humor story, because it was time for one of those.
> 
> Updated every Thursday.

“And the Cannons’ Seeker is still looking for the Snitch—wait, what’s wrong with the Falcons’ Seeker?”  
  
The Quidditch announcer’s voice was the only thing that could have made Harry pay much attention to the game, at that point. It was a foregone conclusion for everyone paying attention (which meant everyone except Ron) that the Cannons were going to lose, again. Harry would rather listen to Hermione telling stories about her desperate colleagues who kept trying to prove that registered werewolves, on Wolfsbane, and confined during the full moon, were still dangerous.  
  
But he jerked around when he heard that. Because he knew who the Falcons’ Seeker was. It was sort of impossible  _not_ to, with the way that Ron had been moaning about it.  
  
Draco Malfoy was clutching at his broom as though it had become Harry’s broom in first year. Harry stood up in concern, rapidly scanning the crowd for someone who had hexed it. But too many people were staring up at Malfoy now. Locating the one person concentrating on the magic was impossible.  
  
“There he goes!”  
  
Harry didn’t even look around to see if Malfoy was really slipping. He flicked his wand in the Summoning Charm and started running along the edge of the upper seats. He knew almost all Quidditch teams kept brooms just off the pitch in case one of the players started to have trouble, and one of them now sped towards him.  
  
Harry jumped onto it as it went past the seats, flipping himself over. He was at home in an instant, clutching at the broom and clinging with his legs as he looked up. Yes, there was the small falling shape.  
  
_Even easier to see than a Snitch,_ Harry thought, and dipped and then zoomed across the pitch, his mind chanting the likelihood of running into someone to him. Almost all the players were higher up than he was, and most of them would realize that he was going lower because that was the way Malfoy was heading, and they would—  
  
_Get out of the way!_  Harry twisted to the side just as a Bludger zoomed past him.  
  
And then he was there, below Malfoy, a little over to the side. Harry had time to lean towards Malfoy and snatch his arm and swing him around. Malfoy gasped as his arm jerked, and more when he banged into the broom, but he didn’t whine or moan. He was too busy clambering over Harry onto the broom.  
  
Harry turned the broom smoothly in midair, back towards the stands, trusting Malfoy to handle himself with sufficient grace that they wouldn’t crash to the ground. At the moment, he had to make sure he didn’t fall, even more than Malfoy didn’t.  
  
And Malfoy’s teammates were trying to crowd around them, of all the inconvenient times, chattering constantly as they moved about how great a hero Harry was and how they’d never seen such skillful flying and how he should be a Quidditch player instead of an Auror. Harry smiled the way he did at people flashing cameras in his face and decided the best thing to do was spin down, moving the tip of the broom in a constant circle. It forced some of the other players to clear from around them and was less wearying than a straight descent.  
  
They landed safely, and heard the Quidditch commentator yelling himself hoarse about the Snitch and the Cannons. Harry didn’t care. He nodded at Malfoy as he hopped to the ground. “Are you all right?”  
  
“No,” said Malfoy, and when Harry leaned anxiously forwards, he continued in fixed, furious tones, “Oh, you meant  _physically_. Yes. What, after all, are dignity and honor against my physical  _life_?” He glanced away from Harry, his face set.  
  
Harry blinked. “A lot of dignity and honor you would have had as a corpse,” he said, the first thing that came to mind.  
  
Malfoy glanced at him. “But I would have fallen to death in an ordinary way, which meant I would have died in a way befitting a Malfoy.”  
  
Harry held up his hands. “All right. I give up. Explain why being rescued isn’t befitting a Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy’s teammates started landing around them before Malfoy could answer, clapping him on the back and hitting Harry on the shoulder until it hurt and shouting approval of Harry’s skill.  
  
“—did you see him? Did you  _see_ him? Came around the Bludger like a swallow, a bloody  _swallow_ —”  
  
“ _I_ thought it was like a dragon.”  
  
“That was worth losing a game for, anyway!”  
  
Harry blinked and looked up. It appeared that the Cannons’ Seeker did have the Snitch, and was sitting on his broom staring at it in stunned silence. The stands of fans were also mostly silent, unsure what to do with a Cannon victory.  
  
“That would be another piece of the dishonor,” said Malfoy, his voice so stiff that Harry desperately clutched his own chin. It was the only way he could keep either his jaw from sagging open or his voice from bursting out in laughter.  
  
Harry turned around with another small shrug. “It wasn’t your fault you fell. Someone was jinxing your broom. I’ll find out who it was and bring them in, and that will probably call for a rematch.”  
  
Malfoy pulled himself up like a very pale giraffe. “I want to earn my triumphs on my own, not because someone else wins them for me.”  
  
Harry cocked his head slowly. He knew he probably shouldn’t ask the question, but it was being pulled out of his throat like treacle. “What person would be winning the triumph for you if someone jinxed your broom…?”  
  
Malfoy gave him a glare that said all too clearly he didn’t understand the plight of the pale giraffes, and turned away. “Get back to catching criminals like Aurors do, then,” he said over his shoulder. “Not catching Seekers, which  _fans_ don’t do.”  
  
“I never said I was a fan!” Harry called after him, but Malfoy was trying his best to melt through the crowd. Harry jogged after him. “Listen, Malfoy. I didn’t mean to ruin anything for you. I reacted the way I always do when I see someone in trouble.”  
  
“That only makes it more insulting.” Malfoy turned slowly in place to stare at him. “Because Malfoys are  _not like other people_.”  
  
_Clearly, because they want to be dignified corpses._  But this time, Harry managed to hold the words in. He bowed his head in what he hoped would sufficiently look like real repentance and murmured, “Then how do I make it up to you? Malfoys can’t be so different from other people that they don’t want atonement,” he added, and yes, those were words that he would explode if he tried to contain.  
  
Malfoy stood there staring into space, perhaps at the remains of his patience because Harry continued to talk to him. Then he pivoted around further. “Attend the party the Crocodiles are giving tonight.”  
  
Harry blinked. The Crocodiles were an organization of Quidditch fans who tried to cultivate favor with the players by sending them gifts, badmouthing people who criticized them, and buying tickets to their games so they could sit in a solid row staring soulfully up at them. Harry hadn’t known they also threw parties. “How will that help?”  
  
Malfoy’s nose went up and up. Now he looked like a giraffe straining for leaves just out of its reach. “It will aid me in recovering my poise. It will make it seem as though I can  _command_ the attendance of someone famous.” He said the word “command” as if it was poison, which seemed to be the opposite of his beliefs to Harry, but far be it from Harry to object. “And you’ll be going as my date, which puts you in the category of people who can save my life without an objection from me.”  
  
Harry blinked. He blinked again, but Malfoy’s nose hadn’t come down a centimeter and nothing made any more sense after the blink than before it.  
  
“Um,” he said. “I will?”  
  
Malfoy apparently didn’t hear the question in the last question, because he nodded regally. “The party will begin at seven,” he said. “But come to the Manor at six. You’ll need some instruction in how to dress.” His nose lowered only enough so that his eyes appeared over it like frog’s eyes and swept Harry’s robes disdainfully. “No. Five-thirty.”  
  
And then he turned and somehow mince-swaggered away. Harry knew how silly that would sound if he tried to explain it to anyone, but that was what it was.  
  
“I didn’t know you were dating Malfoy,” said another Falcons player, one of the Chasers, a tall woman with brown eyes of the sort Harry admired. Right now, though, they were so bright with amusement that Harry had to look away. “Congratulations—well, to him. I’m sorry for you.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows slowly, but none of the other Quidditch players around her contradicted her. They were all simply looking at Harry with sad eyes or slow, identical shakes of their heads, at least in two cases.  
  
“You  _did_ just hear my surprise when he referred to that?” Harry finally had to ask. “I’m not dating him. I was shocked because I had no intention of showing up as his date.”  
  
The Chaser’s expression didn’t change. “Oh, I know that. But you’re dating him now.”  
  
“There’s this theory,” Harry said, “and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think both people have to agree that they’re dating. Or they’re not.” He kept his sentences short and simple. Sooner or later, that had to win him entry to a world where people were more sensible.   
  
The Chaser shrugged. “If Draco Malfoy says you’re dating, then you are. Believe me, I have some experience of this myself.” She gave Harry another suspiciously—and specifically—sympathetic look, and then nodded. “Don’t worry. He gets bored as fast as he gets interested. One evening at a Crocodile party, and then his ego will be soothed, and your life will go back to normal.” She sounded as though she didn’t know whether to envy him or not.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead for a second. “You were one of the people he dated?” he asked, just to make sure.  
  
“Oh, yes.”  
  
“And who else?”  
  
The other Falcons had drifted away, but the Chaser pointed after them when Harry opened his eyes. “Angelica, our Keeper. And some woman named Pansy Parkinson, for a while.” The Chaser snorted. “I was the one who came after her. They were nasty for each other, which is probably why Draco stayed with her for so long.”  
  
“Um, we were rivals in school.”   
  
“That’s all past, though, or he would have made some reference to it today.” The Chaser shrugged, and her hair swayed into view, with a braid in it that only took up the last few bits of her hair. Harry remembered her name abruptly: Jessica Cassel, voted one of the best Chasers in Britain last year. “You don’t have to worry about it for long.”  
  
Harry finally made the plunge in another way that was obvious to him, but apparently not to anyone else. “But he dates women, is what I’m saying.”  
  
“He’s been very open about being bisexual.” Cassel grinned. “Didn’t bother me for the small amount of time that it was my business.” She abruptly eyed Harry, and her smile was gone. “Does it bother you?” she asked.  
  
“No. But  _I_ only date women.”  
  
Cassel wagged her head. “Not anymore.”  
  
“I could just not show up to the party,” Harry pointed out, a little fascinated now. He wondered what response he could give, what level he could reach, that would make Cassel finally see how strange this was.  
  
“Yes, but then he’ll give an interview to the papers tomorrow about how you broke his heart. It’s what he did with the last person who stood him up.” Cassel raised an eyebrow at him. “The papers only picked  _that_ story up because he’s famous. She wasn’t. But I can imagine that it’ll be much worse for you.”  
  
Harry exhaled. “This is crazy.”  
  
Cassel reached out and tapped him on the shoulder with one finger. “Draco knows how to have fun. I’ll say that. And you can tell your grandchildren someday about the strangest evening of your life. Go for the good story, if nothing else.” And then she shouldered her broom and walked off jauntily in the direction her teammates had taken.  
  
Harry looked after her, and went on looking after her while he waited to wake up. Or for someone to walk up and laugh and tell him all about the joke they’d conspired with Malfoy to play on him.  
  
It didn’t happen. He went on standing there, and the people clustering around him now were the usual sort who always rushed in after he had done something normal and demanded to know how he had done it and what he wanted as a reward. Harry fended them off with the smiles and gestures he had down pat by now, and finally came out at the edge of the Quidditch pitch.  
  
Ron was waiting there, looking around wildly. Harry thought for a second that he might be looking for a Cannon player to get his autograph, but then he focused on Harry and rushed towards him.  
  
“That was amazing!” he cried.  
  
“I know,” said Harry. “Malfoy wanting me to go somewhere as his date? It’s crazy.”  
  
Ron stared at him, then said, “What? Mate, stop joking! The Cannons  _won!_ ” He gripped Harry and shook him back and forth. “You have to be serious when we go talk to Hermione, or she’ll never believe me!”  
  
Harry managed to keep his teeth from clamping down his tongue as Ron shook him, but only barely. He finally fended Ron off with a wave of his hand, and gasped at him, “A full audience saw. You don’t have to—”  
  
“Yes! I do!” Ron screeched, and waved his arms around. “Of  _course_ I have to! This is the most amazing day of my  _life_!”  
  
He pranced off the pitch, looking as though he was seeing the Seeker’s catch of the Snitch over and over again. Harry stood looking after him for a bit. He knew Ron wouldn’t leave without him, if only because he wanted Harry to support his “incredible story.”  
  
And then Harry, despite himself, began to laugh.  
  
He had changed since the war. Now, people weren’t trying to kill him because of a prophecy or even as revenge for causing Voldemort’s downfall; all of  _them_ had been dealt with almost five years ago. Harry had had to learn to treat possible death and emergency situations with less than the deadly seriousness he’d had then. He might die saving someone, but so might any Auror. If he was committed to being treated like an ordinary person, he had to get over himself. And he had.  
  
It seemed that it was the fate of many ordinary people to become Draco Malfoy’s dates, at least for a while.  
  
Harry shook his head, snorted once, and then went to get cleaned up and decide whether he was going to wear ordinary robes, dress robes, or something completely mad from the back of his wardrobe. All had their advantages.  
  
Ordinary robes would tell Malfoy where he could shove his suggestions, and maybe get Harry out of attending the Crocodiles’ party at all.  
  
Dress robes would show that he respected both the occasion and his own taste.  
  
Something completely mad would give Malfoy more scope to do something mad in return.  
  
And Harry had to admit, he was fascinated to see what Malfoy would come up with next.


	2. Who's Allowed to Date Draco Malfoy

Harry cocked his head at his wardrobe, and then nodded and pulled out the robes from the back of it. The robes that had been a gift from a grateful admirer not long after he’d started Auror training, and which looked…  
  
Well. Harry turned and stared into the mirror, swirling the robes back and forth in front of him.  
  
They were rainbow robes. There were big stripes of red and blue and purple, and some smaller ones of green and yellow and orange. The person who had sent the robes had explained enthusiastically that the colors represented all the different emotions they’d experienced during the war. The blue was for sorrow, and the red for anger, and the green for joy, and so on.  
  
 _Why am I still remembering this sort of shit years after I read the letter they wrote?_  
  
Harry snorted and slipped the robes on over the normal shirt and trousers he had learned to wear from hard experience. People thought it was a “harmless” prank to Vanish his robes on occasion so they could get a look at what was underneath.  
  
 _It’s a good thing I do remember that sort of shit. I can entertain Malfoy with their speculations. It’s on a level that he’s likely to be familiar with._  
  
Harry shook his head. The further away he got from Malfoy, the more the strange atmosphere that Cassel had told him about faded. Now he wondered why in the world he was going along with this, and why Malfoy’s teammates had gone along with it in the past. Was Malfoy  _that_ good in bed? Or did he have them all terrified of his legendary rages that supposedly happened every time he thought someone was getting more attention from the press than he was?  
  
Harry sighed a little. He had never thought this was going to be a real date or anything but a waste of time. At least he was going to make it as fun for himself as possible, he thought, looking into the mirror once more to make sure that the robes hung properly.  
  
After all, it wouldn’t do to have  _Malfoy_ think he was less than completely serious.  
  
*  
  
“That’s a surprise.”  
  
Malfoy was taking a step back from his front door, his gaze utterly fixed on Harry as he moved in. Harry was trying to return his look instead of gaping at the little of the Manor he could see beyond Malfoy. And not because it was opulent.  
  
“What is?” Harry asked, and turned to study Malfoy. He could feel the smile that Hermione would probably describe as his trouble-making one cropping up around his mouth. Maybe his pretense of seriousness would be enough to fool Malfoy completely and Malfoy wouldn’t even change his robes around when they went to the Crocodiles’ party.  
  
“I’d only ever heard of you dating women.” Malfoy reached out and picked up a fold of Harry’s robe, holding it out and turning it back and forth.  
  
“You made it clear that I didn’t have much choice,” said Harry dryly. He peeked at the walls beyond Malfoy again. Dozens of reflections flashed and turned, because everything Harry could see was totally covered with mirrors.  
  
“Yes, but you’re wearing rainbow robes,” said Malfoy. “Rainbows are a sign that you’re gay.”  
  
Harry turned and gaped at him. “ _What_? Is that a Muggle thing?”  
  
Malfoy looked down his nose without even changing his expression, which Harry had to admit was a pretty impressive trick. “Would I know what it was if so?” He studied Harry’s robes again, then shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that I still have to change them. The green in them doesn’t match your eyes. Come this way.” He turned down the corridor with a brisk snap that reminded Harry of some of the motions he made on his broom when he was going after the Snitch.  
  
“I never heard of rainbows as a sign that you’re gay,” Harry protested, trailing after him. No matter how much he wracked his brains, he was sure he didn’t remember that.  
  
Of course, the Dursleys were the sort of Muggles that would keep him far away from all sorts of things like that, because they didn’t want to encourage “freakiness” of any sort. And he remembered Hermione mentioning rainbows once, but he had thought they were American. Or at least the wizards she was talking about were.  
  
“Why rainbows?” he added, and shied away from the mirrors. It was dizzying to watch all those dozens of selves pacing him.  
  
“I have no idea,” said Malfoy. “But I am glad that you’re willing to describe yourself as gay to all and sundry. It lessens some of the tensions that even someone as prominently placed as myself does have to worry about.”  
  
Harry told himself not to giggle. And he managed with considerable aplomb, helped by the fact that they’d entered Malfoy’s bedroom and he had to gape instead.  
  
The mirrors were represented by only one of them on the wall here, although it was still so enormous that Harry would have taken it for a window in a normal house. There was an enormous wardrobe made of what looked like solid gold taking up the wall opposite the mirror. The third wall had a door that had—well, if it wasn’t a doorknob made of solid diamond, Harry didn’t know what diamonds looked like. And he’d been pelted with enough of them by people desperate to marry him that he really  _should._  
  
The fourth wall was taken up by the bed. Or  _was_ the bed. Harry couldn’t actually see the wall. Only the plush curtains, and the pillows large enough to hold several baby dragons, and the sheets that were in some dazzling shade of silver. Harry said the first thing that came to mind. “You like to sleep on precious metal?”  
  
Malfoy took a moment to look at the sheets as if it was a long time since he had considered them properly. Then he spun around and stared down at Harry in that strange way he had again. “You are making some pun that you think is clever on my name,” he said.   
  
Harry blinked. “Huh?” He hated to sound so stupid, but Malfoy had once again gone leaping off into pale giraffe-land and Harry couldn’t understand him.  
  
“A pun,” said Malfoy. “What sleeps on precious metals in all the old Muggle stories?  _Dragons_. And Draco is Latin for dragon.” He folded his arms and sneered at Harry in a way that was less impressive than his other ones, because this time he actually had to change his face into a different expression. “That was what you were going for.”  
  
Harry blinked again, then held up a hand. “That kind of complex thinking is beyond me,” he said. “Just the way you always thought it was when we were in school. And can I say that you seem really familiar with Muggle things?”  
  
Malfoy puffed up in a way that made it seem as if he was about to spit poison. Harry gave him a helpless smile and waited. Maybe this would end with Malfoy sending him out of the house and attending the party alone. Or calling up some Slytherin friend of his and demanding they accompany him at the last minute. Or spreading the word that he and Harry  _had_ been dating but had broken up after Harry saved his life—  
  
He honestly didn’t expect Malfoy to seize his arm and drag him in front of the mirror on the wall, studying him with critical intensity.  
  
“So,” said Malfoy, and then drew his wand and cast a few complex charms. Harry saw a thick yellow aura appear around him in the mirror. Automatically, he looked down at his hands and arms, but they didn’t glow. The aura seemed to exist only in the glass. “Yes. Perhaps more insight than I thought, less sarcasm.” He flicked his wand again, and this time the aura in the mirror turned blue. “But less  _political_ insight. Well, of course. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been surprised when I said that only someone close to me could save me.”  
  
Harry shook his head, looking at his glowing reflection. He had to admit the blue color looked nice. Perhaps he would get some robes made in that hue. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Malfoy ignored him, and this time the aura changed to green. “More magical strength than is absolutely necessary. A lack of education, but we can remedy that.” Harry looked around immediately for the “we” Malfoy was talking about, but didn’t see even a house-elf in the room, which left the horrible suspicion that Malfoy thought Harry was interested in learning about pure-blood politics from him. The aura became red, and Malfoy said thoughtfully, “Oooh. More than enough passion.”  
  
“Did you make Cassel and all the rest of your paramours stand in front of the mirror this way?” Harry finally demanded. Not that he believed Malfoy was somehow reading all those qualities from auras. He was probably making shit up to sound impressive.  
  
Malfoy twisted his head slowly to the side and stared at him. Too bad for him that Harry had encountered slow stares like that from the older Aurors and had ceased to be impressed by them. He only watched back with his own eyebrows creeping up his face, and Malfoy frowned and looked away.  
  
“Hmmm,” said Malfoy, and this time the green aura came back when he shook his wand like it was on fire and he wanted to put it out. “More education than I  _thought_.”  
  
“What are you talking about now? I’m still not more educated about why you wanted to plunge to the ground and make a pretty corpse.”  
  
“ _And_ more insight,” said Malfoy, and the aura turned yellow again. “Yes. That will do nicely.”  
  
This time, the aura disappeared when he moved his wand, and he folded his arms and explained in a tone that was probably meant to be “gracious Lord Malfoy condescends to the peasants,” not “arrogant Lord Malfoy begs for a head-smashing.” “Your usage of the word ‘paramours.’ It means that you have a bigger vocabulary than I thought you did. And you realized my corpse would have been pretty. Not as much insight as would be demonstrated by the word ‘beautiful,’ but enough to raise your score.”  
  
“My  _score_?” Harry shook his head. “You can’t use just that to judge your dates, or you wouldn’t have said that we were dating out on the Quidditch pitch without this mirror.”  
  
“More and more insight,” Malfoy murmured. “The mirror and the fact that you knew something else was happening there. Well.” He paused and gave Harry an absolutely dazzling smile.   
  
Harry felt an answering smile pull at his lips despite himself. He could see how someone who was attracted to men would want to date Malfoy.  
  
“But we’ve already spent half an hour on the initial assessment,” said Malfoy, in a brisk voice, and turned Harry to face the mirror again. “Now. For your robes.” He flicked his wand, and the rainbow robes turned a solid green.  
  
Harry made a face at it. He hadn’t thought Malfoy would bother commenting on it, since he seemed content to talk to himself most of the time, but at once he said, in a sharp voice, “What is wrong with that shade?”  
  
Harry paused in startlement for a second, and then wanted to laugh when he realized what it was. Merlin forbid he question Malfoy’s  _taste_. That was probably worse than saving his life when he didn’t want Harry to.  
  
And Harry knew how he could talk Malfoy out of using that color, too.  
  
“Oh, nothing,” he said hastily, looking over his shoulder. “Only everyone always tells me it matches my eyes. Hermione. And Ron. And Ginny, when I was dating her. And Cho Chang, when we renewed my relationship. And random people in the street.” He reached back and managed to pat Malfoy’s shoulder, aiming only in the mirror. “But it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with having the same kind of taste as everyone else.”  
  
Malfoy’s hand seized his wrist, and Harry blinked a little, then grinned. There was the quickness that everyone told him Malfoy had as Seeker, but which Harry hadn’t had much of a chance to see him display yesterday.  
  
Or ever, really. Malfoy must have improved a lot since his days at Hogwarts to impress a professional team.  
  
“The robes are not staying this shade,” Malfoy said, and his voice was low and impassioned. “I’m changing them to a shade that complements mine.”  
  
“Oh, what robes are you wearing?” Harry asked, trying to seem innocent and inquiring and no more than that. Otherwise, he would ruin his act.  
  
“These,” said Malfoy, and pulled out robes from apparently nowhere, although Harry saw his wardrobe door bang and recognized the crackling signature of a wandless Summoning Charm.  
  
Harry looked at them and nodded. “Nice. Silver is one of my favorite colors.”  
  
Malfoy moved an aggressive step closer and stood there glaring at him. This time, he didn’t look like a pale giraffe. He had moved on to a boggling octopus.  
  
“They are  _grey_ ,” he whispered. “Just like my sheets are grey. And my eyes are grey.”  
  
“And your hair is grey?” Harry asked, cocking his head as if he wanted to consider Malfoy’s hair from the side.  
  
Malfoy spun on his heel and glanced hastily into the mirror. Then he turned back to Harry, all wounded pride, and said, “You must have a hard time recognizing Galleons, Potter, if you think  _gold_ is grey.”  
  
“I don’t,” said Harry, happy to feel something almost delirious bubbling up in him. He could play Malfoy’s game and play it pretty well, when he wasn’t concerned about what other people would say as a result. “I think gold is gold. And I’m pretty good at distinguishing between gold and silver.”  
  
Malfoy wavered back and forth as if he didn’t know which insult to address first, and then visibly calmed himself down, hung his robes on a hook near the mirror, and considered Harry from several different angles. Then he nodded decisively. “No. Grey wouldn’t suit you, considering your striking coloring.”  
  
“What about silver?” Harry asked, innocent again, and met Malfoy’s eyes in the mirror with a widening of his own.  
  
Malfoy abruptly gave him a soft smile and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve never had someone spoil you with clothing, have you?” he asked in a voice as soft. “Never had someone who helped you form your own taste?”  
  
“Oh, people tried,” said Harry. “But most of them were more interested in augmenting their own wardrobes.”  
  
Malfoy blinked for the smallest moment. Harry held back a snort. Yes, he could hardly have avoided reading about that breakup of Harry’s in the papers.   
  
An instant later, though, Malfoy was back to soft and seductive pale octopus. “No one truly has,” he murmured. “That means that you don’t know you would look good like  _this_.” He waved his wand, and Harry’s robes changed again.  
  
This time, they were a pretty ordinary blue. Then Harry shifted his weight slightly, and they shimmered and changed. They were a deep royal blue, the light discovering unexpected depths of color in them.   
  
Harry couldn’t help smiling, and it seemed Malfoy could tell the difference between an approving smile and a taunting one. “You like them,” he said.  
  
Harry was never going to say that in so many words, not when Malfoy’s smugness was thick enough to act as the building blocks for a whole new Manor. “They’re very…colorful,” he said, and let the pause in his voice suggest all sorts of things.  
  
Malfoy’s hand tightened on him for a second, and then he turned and said, “I need to put on my robes, or else we’ll be late. Don’t try to peek in on me in the bathroom, Potter. We’re not at that level of intimacy yet.” He paused and added over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him, “And besides, the sight would stun you unconscious, and I don’t have time to revive you.”  
  
Harry waited until the bathroom door was shut, and cast a careful charm to muffle his laughter. Yes, he was amused. But having Malfoy know  _how_ amused would blow the whole game.  
  
Besides, it probably wasn’t the right kind of amusement for their level of intimacy.  
  
*  
  
Having people roar when he came into the room, and knowing it wasn’t for  _him_ , was the kind of experience Harry could have more often.  
  
He was parading on Malfoy’s arm. Of course. The party was in a huge dome-shaped building that someone had probably modified from a manor house sold cheaply by a desperate pure-blood family after the war. Of course.   
  
And this being the Crocodiles, there was a gigantic green illusion of a crocodile dancing on its tail in the center of the dome, with their motto flashing beneath it in red letters: “Quidditch players make us grin so wide!”  
  
Harry was wondering idly what Malfoy would say about that when he felt Malfoy pinch his arm. Harry turned around to tell him what he could do with  _that_ , and found starry-eyed fans and reporters crowding around them.  
  
“Why are you here with Auror Potter, Mr. Malfoy?” one of them yelled.  
  
Oh, right. Harry supposed he was to offer a smile to the cameras and tell them about him and Malfoy dating. He opened his mouth, but Malfoy was already speaking, in a voice that was deep and resonant and made him sound more like a crocodile himself than an octopus _or_ a giraffe.  
  
“Because Auror Potter has kindly agreed to marry me, and it is appropriate for fiancés to accompany each other to parties like this.”  
  
Not all the noise around them died away, but it felt like a lot of it did. And Harry didn’t manage to keep from turning around and offering a gape that was probably also inappropriate for their level of (alleged) intimacy.  
  
Malfoy glanced at him, then added, “Oh, yes, of course,” and swept his hand around the way he had when he Summoned his robes. In his hand now rested a small, dove-grey box with a gleaming platinum ring in the middle of a velvet cushion that was probably also grey. “Marry me, darling?” 


	3. Who Refuses Draco Malfoy

Harry looked at the platinum ring, and then he gave a long, delicate sigh and reached out, placing his hand on top of Malfoy’s, over the box. He held his eyes and asked gently, “Did you forget that I asked you for silver, instead of platinum?”  
  
For an instant, he saw it, deep in Malfoy’s eyes. The flare, the unexpected shimmer, the utter shock that someone would have challenged him on the game he was playing.  
  
Then he tilted his head back and met Harry’s eyes with an easy little curl of his lip. He murmured, “You know my objections to silver.”  
  
“Yes, but you know  _mine_ to platinum, and they’re deeper.” Harry shook his head, keeping the movements slow and dreamy. It was oddly easy to do, as long as he was in Malfoy’s low, heated gaze. He patted Malfoy’s fingers. “Yours have to do with color. Mine have to do with that time I was almost kidnapped and killed.”  
  
This time, he saw it, before Malfoy caught it: the slightest sign of a sag to his jaw. He didn’t let it fall open, but the chance had been there, and Harry knew it. Malfoy wasn’t immediately able to produce a retort.  
  
“Time you were kidnapped and killed?” piped up one of the watching crowd, sounding interested and awed.  
  
 _I almost forgot they were there,_ Harry thought in wonder.  _Isn’t that strange, when this whole performance is for their benefit?_  
  
He turned to the person who had asked—a Crocodile, from the deep green robes and grinning emblem on her beast—with a small nod. “Yes. It was traumatic.” He paused, aware that he was the center of fascinated, staring eyes, and yet not resenting it the way he usually did. Clearly, what he should have done in response to Rita Skeeter’s lies was to make up his own. “How many of you have heard of the Masked Avenger?”  
  
Hundreds of heads shook simultaneously. Of course they did, because Harry had pulled the Masked Avenger out of whatever dimension most of the stories about his love life came from.  
  
“It was very traumatic.” Harry lowered his voice a little, but cast a  _Sonorus_ at the same time, so his voice could reach the far corners of the hall the Crocodiles had rented. There were other Quidditch players glaring at him, probably for stealing their attention or thunder or something, but Harry ignored them. They could benefit at the next party. “The Masked Avenger was a horrible masked wizard who attacked Light wizards who had defeated his kind and swore to make them pay. They say he was Voldemort’s bastard son with a lamia, and that’s why he had to hide his face.”  
  
A ripple of awe ran around the room. Of course there were people who didn’t believe it. Unless he was a lot stupider than Harry had thought he was, one of them was standing at his elbow right now, still offering him the platinum ring.  
  
Harry nodded and looked from face to face, making sure that his own was as sober as possible. “He kidnapped me when I was walking down Diagon Alley on my way to the Apparition point.”  
  
“What were you doing there that day?” asked someone who probably hoped to disprove the lie or something.  
  
“Secret Ministry business,” said Harry promptly. “Anyway, he kidnapped me and bound me with  _platinum chains_.” He glanced at the ring and gave a shudder that he made sure was as delicate as the sigh he had used to refuse Malfoy’s first offer of the ring. “It was terrible. Ever since that day, I’ve loathed platinum.”  
  
There was more silence, for about half a second. Then someone demanded, “But what happened  _then_? How did you escape him?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I really wish I could tell you. But it’s not only secret Ministry business and an Unspeakable assassin would be dispatched to murder me if I ever told you, it’s also related to the way that I first began dating Draco Malfoy.” He turned to Malfoy with melting eyes. “I know he wanted to propose in public, but I’m not sure he wants me to tell that story in public.”  
  
Malfoy stood there with his extended hand still clasping the platinum ring, and his other arm folded across his chest. Harry thought he would see the spark of challenge in his eyes, and Malfoy would make him tell the “story.”  
  
But there was something else there instead, a light so bright that Harry blinked. It wasn’t glee, although it had part of that in it. It wasn’t anger, not at all. It was—  
  
It sort of looked like  _admiration_ , although if it was, Harry wasn’t certain why Malfoy was still alive. Surely he would have killed himself if he’d ever realized he was feeling admiration for Harry Potter of all people.  
  
Right on cue, Malfoy broke their entranced stare and swept a bow. “Right on all counts, and I should not have presumed to make the ring platinum,” he said, drawing his wand. Harry reflexively tensed, but most people were watching Malfoy now, and he doubted they had noticed. “Will this do?”  
  
He touched his wand to the ring and Transfigured it. Nonverbally, which made Harry stare for whole other reasons. Transfiguration was among the branches of magic that very few people could make work without words. Usually, the ones who could were also the ones who had talent to become Animagi.  
  
The ring shimmered and seemed to twist, and when Harry could see it again, it was a glinting band of woven stone.  _Diamonds_ , Harry realized at a glance. Like the knob on the door of Malfoy’s bathroom. Diamonds were either solely woven together or they covered the metal beneath so thickly that there was no chance of seeing what it really was.  
  
Then Malfoy knelt.  
  
He did it gracefully, regally, as he did everything else, as though Harry was kneeling himself and he was trying not to consciously tower over him. Then he held up the box, his eyes steady and bright, and waited.  
  
Harry felt the moment swaying dizzily around him. This was the part where things could go horribly wrong, and probably would, if he made a single move out of place.  
  
Could he even make a single move  _in_ place? he wondered for a second. It seemed that Malfoy came up with a counter to everything, a way to top every outrageous move Harry tried.  
  
Then Harry looked into Malfoy’s eyes, still unreadable, and changed his mind. No, Malfoy was not going to counter everything Harry did. If he came up with something this over-the-top, then Harry was only going to have to choose something else, force Malfoy to race him to keep up. The way he had in Quidditch.  
  
And if Malfoy got hurt because of it, maybe he would back the hell off and realize that not getting hurt in the first place should be enough for any person.  
  
 _Even if he’s an octopus_.  
  
Harry bent down very slowly, at the waist, and let his lips rest for a second on Malfoy’s forehead. It felt soft and cool in a way that made Harry want to snort. Of course Malfoy probably coated it with ground dragon eggshells or something else hideously expensive advertised in the best shops in Diagon Alley.  
  
“You had my heart the first time you knelt for me,” he said, and let his voice get all soft and intimate. Then he picked up the diamond ring and considered it soberly, as if he was a jewelry appraiser. He heard people in the room holding their breaths.  
  
 _Holding their breaths._ Harry would have felt sorry for himself if he had thought Malfoy could beat him, but instead, he just felt sorry for people whose whole existences revolved around other people’s actions, to the point that they would react this way based on whether someone else accepted a marriage proposal.  
  
Then Harry nodded and slid the ring onto his fourth finger. The rest of the room exploded in cheering so loud Harry could feel it booming through the walls and floor like Muggle music. He kept his head bowed, peeking out from under his eyelashes at Malfoy as he rose to his feet.  
  
He was fairly sure that most of the fans wouldn’t notice that Harry had never actually said  _yes_.  
  
Malfoy knew it. He put out one arm, and Harry rested his hand gracefully on it. Malfoy opened his mouth. He might be making another announcement about his proposal, or possibly he would say something about food or dancing or when the wedding would be. The point wasn’t what he would say, but what Harry could prevent him from saying.  
  
Harry turned to the Crocodiles instead, held out his hands in a way that made the ring sparkle madly, and announced, “In honor of our wedding party, my fiancé would like to pay for  _everyone’s_ drinks tonight!”  
  
Malfoy shuffled around to stare at him. Now Harry felt sorry for him, because instead of an octopus or a giraffe, he just looked like a goldfish. A goldfish that had seen an enormous paw scoop all the rest of the goldfish out of the bowl and knew what was coming for him next.  
  
Of course, anything Malfoy might have said was drowned by the even louder explosion of cheering. Harry fluttered his eyelids at Malfoy and added, “That’s what you said before we left home, dear. I didn’t mean to ruin your surprise. I didn’t, did I?” He fluttered his eyelids some more.   
  
 _This is harder than it looks. I wonder how hard some of those women who did it for me practiced?_  
  
A sudden memory jolted into Harry’s head, of a time he had gone into Flourish and Blotts last year and run into a former Hogwarts student who had been a Hufflepuff three years below him. Harry had politely pretended to remember him, but had been puzzled when the man kept looking at him and blinking hard, instead of clapping him on the back or asking for his autograph or wanting to reminisce about school.  
  
 _He was flirting with me? He was, wasn’t he?_  
  
That was a weird thing to think about, that Harry could have missed flirtation from a bloke up until now.  
  
He blamed being caught up in the memory for letting Malfoy get the upper hand again. Malfoy said, “Of course not, Harry. I got to make the announcement of our marriage, and that’s the far more important thing to me.” He caught Harry’s hand again and drew him near, and whispered, “And now you’ll oblige me by waltzing with me.”  
  
About to refuse, Harry had a far better idea. He widened his eyes and looked up at Malfoy. “Okay,” he sighed.  
  
Malfoy would have paused, maybe, but he seemed to be driven by a desire not to be a goldfish again. He drew Harry towards the center of the hall, beneath the illusory crocodile, where a dance floor had appeared. Or maybe it had been there before, only crowded. Harry had to admit he hadn’t had time to notice much before Malfoy proposed.  
  
Bloody  _proposed_.  
  
Harry felt as if he was riding a cresting wave, and he couldn’t go down, or he would drown. But it was exhilarating. The pulse pounded all through his veins, and when Malfoy put his hand over Harry’s wrist as he drew him into a waltzing posture, there was no way he could miss it. Harry watched to see what would happen.  
  
A complacent look settled on Malfoy, and Harry didn’t even have to wonder what he was thinking. He whispered, “It’s all right,  _Harry_. Many people find their heartbeats going erratic around me.”  
  
 _Have you considered whether it’s because they’re afraid of your ego?_ Harry thought, but he had to stick to the plan, and not quips that would break it, entertaining as they would be. Besides, Malfoy didn’t deserve the benefits of Harry’s wit.  
  
Instead, Harry stuck to the original plan and waited for the first complicated dance step to open up in the waltz. Then he tripped over Malfoy’s feet.  
  
Malfoy stumbled and gave him an incredulous glare. Harry gaped up at him and gasped, loudly enough to be heard by people still obsessed with thoughts of diamond rings, “I’m sorry, Dragon. Only you know I’m no good at dancing when I’m looking into your eyes!”  
  
Malfoy stood there in outrage, trying to decide what to do something about first, Harry thought, the nickname or the pretense. Harry acted like he wanted to keep dancing, and tripped several more times as Malfoy remained motionless.  
  
“Dragon, come  _on_!” Harry said, and tugged at Malfoy’s hands, whining, when he stood there. “This is my favorite part!”  
  
Several of the people watching gasped or sighed or said something about how romantic it was. Come to think of it, Harry thought as he watched Malfoy with inner serenity that not even his focus during a case could match, it must be more than a few, or Harry wouldn’t be able to hear them that well.  
  
Then Malfoy smiled.  
  
It was the same dazzling smile Harry had seen in his bedroom, and it might have worked to charm him if he was capable of being charmed by men. As it was, it gave him an excellent excuse to lean in and rest his forehead on Malfoy’s shoulder as if he was about to faint from the sheer loveliness.  
  
Malfoy raised Harry’s head and stared deeply into his eyes. Without appearing to move his lips, he murmured, “You are embarrassing me.”  
  
“How?” Harry let his eyes widen. He didn’t know how good he was at getting them to fill with hurt, because it wasn’t an expression he practiced all that often, but he thought it was pretty good from the way Malfoy flinched. “I didn’t know that! I never wanted to do that!” He dropped Malfoy’s hands and wailed loudly enough to fill most of the hall, “You should have  _told_ me, Dragon!”  
  
There was silence now, or as much silence as there could be with people whispering and the waltz limping to a halt around them. For Harry, the most important silence was that Malfoy stood there without an idea of what to say.  
  
 _Sorry that you tried to date someone who’s too much for you, aren’t you?_ Harry didn’t fold his arms and wink at Malfoy, because that would have ruined the game completely, but he really, really wanted to.  
  
Malfoy moved a step closer and put his finger beneath Harry’s chin. He said, with a tender tone that would fool the people listening because none of them were close enough to hear the words, “I despise that nickname.”  
  
“You didn’t  _tell_ me that.” Harry did his best to pout, and then nearly ruined it all by laughing when Malfoy recoiled a bit from him. It wasn’t much, but Harry was close enough to see it, and that was the point. “You only  _implied_ it. You know I need things spelled out for me, Dragon—oops.” This time, he tried for a cute look when he peered up at Malfoy. Some people thought he was cute, just like some people thought he was in a relationship with Draco Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were shining with that unreadable light again. “Spelled out?” he whispered. “I can do that.”  
  
And he bent down, and kissed Harry.  
  
Harry cocked his ears for a sound of the gasps and the hisses that probably surrounded them as he hesitantly kissed Malfoy in return. He had to make it look real, he thought. He felt a little defensive as Malfoy moved his lips slowly back and forth, and slightly bored, and mostly curious. He hadn’t thought he would ever kiss a man, unless he got drunk and someone dared him. And then it would probably be Ron.  
  
This was—well, it made his lips feel sensitive.  
  
But it was still slightly boring.  
  
Malfoy finally moved backwards and gave him a triumphant look. The Crocodiles all around them were sighing. A few Quidditch players glared. Harry licked his lips and cocked his head towards them.  
  
“Former dates of yours?” he asked in one of those voices like the one Malfoy had used, where the tone was enough for people, and they didn’t need to hear the words.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes looked metallic now. Harry decided that he looked like one of those cheap statuettes that some people sold in Diagon Alley from temporary stands. They’d been Transfigured from cheap materials, and so had Malfoy’s attitude. “Yes.”  
  
“How many of them did you ask to marry you?” Harry asked, with real curiosity. He didn’t pay attention to the papers these days out of self-defense; only the Quidditch section remained refreshingly free of gossip about him.  
  
“None.”  
  
“Wow,” said Harry dryly, as Malfoy began to steer him towards the side of the dance floor. “I feel special.”  
  
Malfoy caught his arm and spun Harry towards him. Harry was already pulling out his wand as he moved, instincts drilled into him through Auror training waking up. But Malfoy hadn’t tried to hurt Harry. He only stood there and stared at him intently, from head to foot.   
  
“You should,” Malfoy whispered. “Because you  _are_.”  
  
A few people were staring at them, or more specifically, at Harry’s wand. Harry needed to do something with it, so he conjured a flower and handed it to Malfoy. Malfoy accepted it gracefully up until he noticed what it was, and then he looked at Harry like a goldfish again.  
  
A snapdragon.  
  
Harry winked at him and said, “You say the nicest things, Drago—oops, I mean Draco. Now, shall we go eat?” He sauntered towards the dinner table, letting the lights flash on his diamond ring and answering questions with quips and snappy replies that multiplied and danced lightly on his tongue.  
  
He felt a little sorry for Malfoy. He had a common disease; he would probably be horrified to know how common. Harry had never found a compact name for it that he liked, so he called it what it was: “Harry-Potter-Shall-Collapse-At-My-Feet-Because-I-Said-A-Few-Sweet-Things-To-Him-Itis.”  
  
 _Poor Malfoy. He might think he has the advantage because he proposed to me and it’s the first time I’ve been courted by a man._  
  
But Harry had been courted and chased by dozens of people, maybe hundreds, if he could count the ones who had sent him owls but never shown up in person. It would take him a long, long time to be impressed.  
  
And there was nothing like the fizz of adrenaline in Harry’s blood, not to mention his absolute disinclination to surrender to Malfoy’s advances, to make the chase a long one.


	4. What You Can Do With a Diamond Ring

Harry grinned to himself as they finally left the Crocodiles’ party. He had quipped and nibbled his way through dinner, and threw more imaginary stories at the people who asked him questions about his supposed relationship with Malfoy, and had a great time.   
  
 _I should have started lying and acting like I’m even more mysterious and wonderful than they expect me to be years ago._  
  
A hand clamped strongly on his elbow brought his flying thoughts back to earth. They were well outside the party by now, even past the Apparition points that the Crocodiles had established on the grounds. A small stand of pale trees, glowing luminous white even in the darkness with the reflection from the party’s lights, separated them from anyone else.  
  
“You need to make a decision now,” Malfoy said, and leaned towards Harry as if he thought he could intimidate him. Given how signally he had failed so far, Harry wondered in pity what he thought had changed. Perhaps Malfoy still had delusions in his head that his having a large house and being a famous Quidditch player mattered to Harry. “You need to come home with me, or not.”  
  
“Not,” said Harry at once. “You should ask me easy questions more often.”  
  
This time, Malfoy’s raised eyebrows reminded Harry irresistibly of a small Crup puppy he had seen in Diagon Alley, staring at a tumbling kitten in the window of the Magical Menagerie. Its own had pulled on the leash and hurried it on, or it would probably have stood there staring all afternoon.  
  
Harry wondered for a second what kind of leash Malfoy would demand if he was a Crup puppy. Probably one made of woven unicorn hair and studded with diamonds. And then he would go home and drink cream from a definitely-not-silver platter while lying on his definitely-grey sheets.  
  
Probably because he was thinking of him as a Crup puppy, Harry’s thoughts about Malfoy were kinder than they would have been otherwise. He reached out and patted Malfoy on the head. “Thanks for the evening’s entertainment,” he said. “It taught me a whole new way to deal with the press.”  
  
“As my fiancé.”  
  
Harry chose to overlook the absence of the question mark that Malfoy had probably misplaced somewhere in his whatever-color-they-were robes. “No,” he said. “Lying. But thanks anyway,” he added, and reached for the diamond ring that glittered on his finger.  
  
Malfoy took a step back and clasped his hands behind his back. “You can’t take that off,” he said. “I would be humiliated in the press.”  
  
“Because  _that’s_ an unfamiliar situation.”  
  
“You would be humiliated in the press.”  
  
Harry cocked his head, not seeing the need to repeat the exact same words he had just used, and smiled.  
  
“You went to the party as my fiancé,” Malfoy continued, and now he sounded a little breathless. “How would you explain backing out now?”  
  
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Harry, and gave his head a mournful shake. “We went home and started reminiscing. It was an evening for reminiscences, right? Like the story of how we met, when you rescued me from the Masked Avenger.” Malfoy opened his mouth, but Harry barreled right on. He had found it was much easier to deal with Malfoy when he didn’t give him the chance to get a word in edgewise. “But we quarreled, because you thought that story put me in your debt, and I disagreed. It ended with me storming out of the house in high dudgeon. Returning the ring, of course, because that’s what you should always do. Or so I’m informed by the many people who thought we were engaged because they owled me one.” Harry beamed at Malfoy. “I have it all figured out. You can attach all the blame to me. I don’t mind.”  
  
Malfoy was still. Harry couldn’t see his face very well now in the shifting light, and squinted to make it out. He thought Malfoy’s eyebrows were permanently glued to his forehead.  _Poor little Crup._  
  
“I would still be humiliated,” Malfoy finally said. “To lose my fiancé on the very evening when I found him.”  
  
“But no one else would know about that,” Harry explained patiently. “They think we have a very long history together. And that’s thanks to me, you know,” he added. He thought Malfoy might need some reminding of that, since he was so focused on himself.  
  
“Of course it is.” Malfoy bent forwards and surveyed Harry. Harry thought he was doing it from a height on purpose, to intimidate Harry, and taught him a nice lesson by standing still and not turning a hair. Malfoy would need to lose some of his arrogance some time. “But  _I_ would know. And I referred to a different kind of finding.”  
  
“Not the proposal kind?” Harry had taken off the diamond ring and was studying it. If Malfoy really insisted on this pretense going longer, then there were things Harry could do that didn’t involve wearing the ring.  
  
“Not at all,” said Malfoy, and reached out and placed his right hand on Harry’s arm like a clamp. “The kind that involves me finally  _finding_ someone who can keep up with me.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I wish you luck in really finding someone like that,” he said. “It’s a wonderful dream. But I can’t keep up with you.”  
  
“Your quick tongue argues otherwise.” Malfoy had moved back so his face was in shadow again. Harry didn’t point out, because he was still being nice, that it didn’t disguise how much his face looked like a Crup’s. “I wish to maintain you as my fiancé beyond this evening. I will, of course, keep you in the style to which you’re accustomed.”  
  
Harry grinned; he couldn’t help it. “I mean that I can’t keep up with you because I’m not gay.”  
  
“Neither am I,” said Malfoy smoothly. “I’m bisexual.”  
  
“But to date you, I would have to be gay.”  
  
“No. Bisexual.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Fine, but I’m not. I can’t keep up with what you need your fiancé to do because of that.”  
  
“You seemed to do well enough with the kiss.” Malfoy looked pleased with himself. “I have, of course, converted straight men before.”  
  
“They must have wanted to be converted,” said Harry, shaking his head. “I don’t.”  
  
Malfoy moved another step closer. “Even knowing what I could do for you?” he whispered. Harry didn’t know what he meant until he nodded to the diamond ring. “Even knowing that you could have my gifts like that, and my undivided attention, for as long as I was interested in you?”  
  
Harry chuckled. He would have found Malfoy’s attitude infuriating if he was chasing him as a criminal or confronting him in a courtroom, but he could almost appreciate it here. “I don’t consider either diamond rings or your undivided attention as desirable.”  
  
Malfoy recoiled a step from him. Harry took the chance to flip the ring back to him, and added, “I’ve studied this well enough that I’m confident I can keep rumors from spreading without actually wearing the ring.” He raised his wand and cast an illusion spell that made a duplicate of the shiny ring appear on his finger. Harry flexed his finger, pleased. Among the many advantages of an illusion was its lesser weight.  
  
Malfoy was silent. Harry glanced at him, wondering if he would try to come up with an excuse for why he couldn’t offer the ring back, or if he would insist on Harry wearing it again anyway.  
  
He did neither. He was peering at the sparkling illusory ring on Harry’s finger, and after a moment, he gave a quick glance up. “That’s a wonderful glamour,” he said.  
  
“Isn’t it?” Harry grinned, and thought it might be his first grin of the evening that wasn’t at Malfoy’s expense. “I rather like it. And this way, you don’t have to worry about anyone suddenly deciding we’re not engaged.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head, but even though Harry waited patiently, he didn’t bring up why he disagreed with Harry’s assumption. Instead, he murmured, “Why would you care so much about sparing me opprobrium in the papers?”  
  
“Because I’ve known what it’s like to have their—er— _opprobrium_  myself.” Harry wondered if Malfoy had a contract with the Falcons to use a certain number of multi-syllable words a day. More likely, a contract with his ancestors. “I’ll spare you what I can. Just not forever. You have to come up with some really spectacular send-off, mind.”  
  
“Maybe I do not wish to.”  
  
“Then I will,” said Harry, obscurely disappointed. It seemed strange to him that he cared more about Malfoy’s reputation at the moment than Malfoy did. “See you around, I suppose.”  
  
Malfoy didn’t say anything else, and that left Harry to walk away, shaking his head. He knew that Malfoy could do whatever he wanted, including concocting stories. It would certainly be of a piece for someone who tricked people into dating him.   
  
But it did seem an abrupt and sort of damp ending to a satisfying party.   
  
*  
  
Harry  _wished_ for damp the next morning. And maybe an ending. He had abrupt.  
  
“Let me go through this again,” he said, slowly, giving Kingsley time to resume being the sensible man Harry knew him to be.  
  
Kingsley smiled at him and nodded. “Of course, Harry. I wouldn’t want you to feel as though I was trying to hurry you into making a decision.”  
  
“Ha-bloody-ha-ha,” Harry muttered, and then began to muse as if he was thinking aloud, although it was really to allow Kingsley to jump in at any time and return them to reality. “So. I appeared at the Crocodiles’ party least night as Malfoy’s fiancé.”  
  
“I’m delighted you can remember back that far.”  
  
Harry flashed Kingsley a certain hand gesture, but did so under the table. With as strange as Kingsley was acting today, Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he was on thin ice with Kingsley even though he never had been before. “And then I decided to come in with the glamour of the ring on my finger today, to spare Malfoy from having to explain a few embarrassing things.”  
  
“It’s a glamour?” Kingsley opened his eyes wide and twisted his head.  
  
Since he was the one who had taught Harry to be that good at illusions, Harry wasn’t  _actually_ amused. “And you called me in and told me that you need someone to figure out who tried to hex Malfoy at the game, because an ordinary sweep for Dark magic revealed something much more powerful and dangerous than you thought it would be.”  
  
“All correct,” Kingsley murmured. “You really are a marvelous Auror.”  
  
Harry didn’t roll his eyes again because he would sprain them if he did, given how many times he’d rolled them during Kingsley’s initial explanation. “I can’t be officially on the case because I’m Malfoy’s fiancé and I would be considered too close to the subject.”  
  
“All reasoning faculties in top form.”  
  
Harry gave in and rolled his eyes. They probably had at least two more rolls in them. “But you want me  _un_ officially on the case and to stick close to Malfoy so I can figure out why and how he’s attracting such powerful enemies.”  
  
Kingsley broke into applause that would have been spontaneous to a trainee. “You’ve put it with admirable clarity and in fewer words than I did.”  
  
“There’s this thing,” Harry confessed, leaning forwards. “Where I’m  _not_ actually his fiancé? Remember it?”  
  
“But he made an announcement that you are. He won’t give that up easily.”  
  
Harry indulged in one more precious eye-roll. “He  _also_ won’t be compelled to stick with me for a long period of time. He seems to drop people and pick them up exactly as he likes. I might put a lot of effort into this investigation and then find that he’d invalidated it all by deciding to announce he’s dating a woman instead, or something.”  
  
“We’ll deal with that if it happens.” Kingsley leaned forwards and tried this smile he seemed to assume was appealing or something, because he repeated it when Harry sat there and stared flatly at him. “Please, Harry? Right now, we have an unprecedented opportunity to conduct an overt investigation and a covert one. We won’t have all the problems that we usually would by placing you undercover.”  
  
“How long did it take you to come up with those words?”  
  
“Unlike some people, I’m not stubborn to the point of imbecility.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “He knows I’m straight. He’s not going to go along with this, especially because he’s not stupid. The instant I have to save his life again or do something that involves meeting up with other Aurors, he’ll know, and then he’ll probably dump me because he wants to be a pretty corpse.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Harry reminded himself forcefully that Kingsley hadn’t been there when he and Malfoy had their discussion about pretty corpses. “I’m just saying that this probably isn’t going to work. I think I could keep myself concealed from his enemies, but not from Malfoy himself. And Malfoy isn’t going to do what we want.”  
  
Kingsley applauded again. “Concise,” he said admiringly. “You could have been a politician if you’d wanted to.”  
  
“I don’t want to,” Harry said. “And I don’t want to act the part of Malfoy’s fiancé, either.”  
  
“Too bad,” said Kingsley, in that tone which meant Harry had reached the limits of the complaints Kingsley would tolerate. “You know how to fascinate and challenge him, or at least you did when you were in school. I’ve read your file,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth to object. “It’s  _your_ responsibility to keep him close enough for the case to go on.”  
  
About to object that he’d already told Malfoy he didn’t want to be his fiancé and reversing himself would be suspicious, Harry got a sudden idea. “Does it matter how I do it?”  
  
Kingsley leaned slowly back and regarded him between one equally slow blink and another. Harry gave him the innocent face that Kingsley knew wasn’t really innocent, but which he hadn’t yet learned how to read behind.  
  
“What are you planning?” Kingsley demanded in a low voice.  
  
“Do I have to be planning something?” Harry touched his heart with a flat hand. “Well, yes, of course I do. I’m only planning to keep him close and do what you asked in an efficient way.”  
  
“No Dark Arts, of course,” said Kingsley.  
  
Harry gave him a real injured look this time, and Kingsley sighed and shook his head. “I don’t want you to do something that could even be  _construed_ as Dark Arts,” he said. “The papers are already full of news about your ‘romantic’ rescue of Malfoy. I don’t think you want to do anything to give their musings a darker tone.”  
  
Harry grinned. “But I can manipulate public opinion all I want? And annoy Malfoy, as long as I keep him close?”  
  
“What  _is_ it?”  
  
Harry winked at Kingsley and stood up. “You’ll just have to be surprised like everyone else by the love story of the century, sir.”  
  
*  
  
Harry arrived at the gates of Malfoy Manor this time with an impressive clearing of his throat that he added to with  _Sonorus_. Then he glanced down at the bundle of flowers in his hand. He thought a trip to most of the florist shops in Diagon Alley had prepared him for this moment, but he wasn’t sure.  
  
Harry shrugged.  _Faint heart never won fair…man. Maiden. Whatever._  Then he began to sing.  
  
He had looked up a ballad that Hermione said was ancient in the wizarding world. Harry didn’t know about ancient, but he knew that the words were all about how the singer had a pure heart and was in love with someone who secretly despised him, but when he left, then he learned his mistake. Meanwhile, the person he was in love with had learned to stop despising him and love him better.  
  
Harry had had to do some careful editing of the pronouns, but he didn’t think it was too bad, really.  
  
The doors flew open by the time he got to the second stanza. Harry smiled at Malfoy and went on singing until he reached the end of the song, and then he slid to his knees outside the gates, bowed his head, and extended the bunch of flowers, lilies and snowdrops and anything else white he’d been able to find. Then he waited.  
  
After a bit, he heard the crunching noise of Malfoy’s footsteps as he came closer. He took the flowers from Harry, and it sounded as though he breathed deeply of their scent. Then he looked down at Harry and shook his head. Harry knew that much even though he’d never dared to look up.  
  
“What was  _that_ for?” Malfoy finally asked.  
  
Harry looked back up, and made his glance as timid and shy and appealing as he possibly could. “I was wrong,” he said. “Please take me back? And give me back the ring?”  
  
From the spark in Malfoy’s eyes, Harry had done what he’d promised Kingsley. He doubted Malfoy  _believed_ him, but he would keep him close and watch him suspiciously to see exactly what was going to happen next.  
  
 _And if I have to pretend to be gay for a little while, that’s okay. It’s not like I’m pretending to be Dark._


	5. What Lurks in Malfoy Manor

Harry glanced around what Malfoy had said was the grand dining room, nodding in appreciation. The windows looked out over the nearest stretch of grounds, with gorgeous grass and flowers probably tended by house-elves. The table stretched down the middle of the room, black wood so shiny that Harry wouldn’t be surprised if it reflected the ghosts of Malfoys past. Chairs with uncomfortable spindly backs—which was how you knew they were height of fashion, probably—paraded alongside the table.  
  
Any dinners in this room would be unspeakably stuffy. But that was the kind of air you breathed when you were a pure-blood. Harry hadn’t had an education in Ministry politics for nothing.  
  
He did raise his wand and cast a few elementary protection charms in the direction of the windows. They blazed once, then settled down to a steady hum that created a small system of runes in the air as it played. Harry studied the runes, and then grunted and turned around. “You’ve only spelled the windows against breakage?”  
  
Malfoy swayed a step closer. Harry wasn’t sure what kind of animal he resembled at the moment, only that it wasn’t as impressive as it liked to think it was. “What else should I spell them against?” he demanded, and his voice was a little shrill. “They’re expensive glass.  _Look_ at the molding on that one!” He waved his hand at a window that, to Harry, looked exactly like all the others. “That’s genuine Friesco. You’re not going to get molding like that anymore.”  
  
Harry didn’t know who or what Friesco was, and had no interest in learning. He raised one hand. “All right,” he said peaceably. “But they could also be spelled against hostile magic, you know. Or Dark Arts.”  
  
“They  _could_ be,” Malfoy agreed, and then stood there and radiated, with folded arms, what he thought of that possibility.  
  
Harry wanted to roll his eyes and tell Malfoy there was someone after him, and having his windows better-protected than they had been so far was a good idea. But he couldn’t do that without breaking his cover, so he settled for dropping a lazy smile on Malfoy and murmuring, “Fine. Then I won’t do anything to them.” He moved a step closer and looked up at him with eyes that were—well, he thought they were soft. He didn’t know if he managed “adoring.” “I just want to give you some gift, and defensive magic is the only thing I’m good at.”  
  
Malfoy unexpectedly narrowed his eyes. “Liar.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Well, I’m not good at playing the devoted boyfriend, so you can’t accuse me of  _that_.”  
  
Malfoy exiled the statement to another reality where he didn’t get troubled by it, much as he had the question of whether he should spell his windows, from Harry’s point-of-view. He grabbed Harry’s arm and steered him instead towards the far door from the dining room. Harry wondered if that was to impress Harry with how many times his reflection would leap out from the table.   
  
“I’m  _accusing_ you of thinking I’m blind. I saw the way you—rescued me.” Malfoy still choked on that word.  _Good_ , Harry decided cheerfully. “You’re incredibly good on a broom.”  
  
Harry hadn’t thought of that, or the way that Malfoy would decide he was insulted because Harry hadn’t referenced it. Then again, probably not even Merlin could decide what Malfoy would be insulted by, since the convoluted workings of Malfoy’s mind were a mystery known only to Malfoy.  
  
“Not professional Quidditch player good,” Harry demurred.  
  
“Yes, you  _are_.” Malfoy turned around and focused on him. “I’ve heard my teammates talk about you. Some of them have seen you play in those piddly little games with your friends. They say you’re good enough for the team.”  
  
“You don’t talk about me, though,” Harry said, still blinking. “So you must not think the same thing.”  
  
“ _I_ have better things to do than gossip.” Malfoy’s face had decided to imitate an iceberg now.  
  
 _But not better things to do than listen,_ Harry thought, which  _he_  decided not to say. Malfoy was already tugging him out, anyway, through the door that turned out to open unexpectedly on the grounds.  
  
“You cost me a game. The least you can do is help me practice. Broomy!”  
  
Harry had to consider whether Malfoy had invented a new adjective for all of two seconds before a house-elf appeared. He smelled of polish and had a skirt that seemed to be made of broom bristles tied around his waist. He was also bowing repeatedly. “Master was calling?”  
  
“Master was,” said Malfoy, with an intonation so nasal that Harry stared at him, surprised he didn’t get a nosebleed. “You will bring us two brooms  _immediately_. And Potter’s is to be a little worse than mine.”  
  
 _Still worried about losing to me even though he doesn’t listen to gossip, I see,_ Harry thought, and rubbed his mouth to cover a smile.  
  
“Stop smirking, Potter. It’s unattractive.”  
  
“But  _you_  smirk a lot,” Harry muttered, unable to help himself.  
  
“That doesn’t matter. My face was formed for it.”  
  
Harry smothered laughter this time as the elf appeared with two brooms, holding out one to each of them. The one Harry took was one of the new Nimbuses; he thought it was the Nimbus Star, which a fellow Auror named Rick Raleigh, who he sometimes played with, used. Harry climbed onto the broom and felt the solid pulse of magic between his legs. He nodded and looked over at Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy had the most peculiar expression. “You aren’t going to object?”  
  
“To what? You’re probably right, and I do owe you this game for costing you the other one.”  
  
Harry had thought it was a nice boyfriend-like reply, properly compliant and all the rest of it, but Malfoy still frowned and turned away, kicking himself into the air on his Comet Blaze. Harry knew it was a better broom than the Nimbus he rode, since Ron had been salivating after it for months. But he didn’t care. The point wasn’t to win, he thought, as he followed Malfoy into the sky.  
  
Although winning would be  _nice_ , and maybe beneficial to Malfoy as well, since it would finally put an end to the posturing, simpering, smirking way he approached everything.  
  
Harry had those as idle thought as he lifted off, but they became real a second later, when he saw a Bludger approaching at top speed. Harry twisted to the side, orbiting around the broom as though it was the central axle of a wheel, and watched the Bludger crash past him into one of the strung-up wards that served as nets along the edge of the pitch.  
  
Malfoy called, “You have to be faster than that if you want to be a professional!”  
  
Harry saw no point in objecting that he didn’t want to be one. It was obvious that Malfoy had decided on what fronts the game would be played.  
  
 _Right,_ Harry thought.  _So the only thing I can do is up the stakes, the way I did when he proposed marriage._  
  
Harry aimed his wand at the Bludger. Malfoy started to shout something, probably objecting to the use of what he would assume was cheating magic, but then went silent as Harry’s spell multiplied the Bludger. Now there were four of them careening around the pitch.  
  
“You know,” Harry called out helpfully to Malfoy. “To practice.”  
  
Malfoy said something, but his voice was too soft for the height and the winds. Harry leaned sideways, which made him rotate around the broom again, as two Bludgers focused on him. Malfoy yelled something perfunctory. Harry was still riding for the win, looking around for the Snitch, and really had no time to spare for Malfoy’s little announcements. He suspected Malfoy would corner him and talk to him on the ground soon enough.  
  
But before that, he made himself a spectacle in the air.  
  
Harry  _had_  to watch as Malfoy pursued a swirling course around the Bludgers, dodging and sweeping so gracefully that he seemed to know where they would go next. Harry nearly got thumped in the ribs and the face, he was so busy watching. But he was able to duck his head and just go about the business of searching for the Snitch.  
  
He didn’t  _dance_ on his way to it, like Malfoy did. But that meant he had all the more time to appreciate Malfoy’s skill.  
  
Malfoy ended up high above the Bludgers, gesturing with one hand. Harry didn’t know if it was meant as a warning or a distraction. His own instincts screamed at him, though, and he plummeted straight down.  
  
One conjured Bludger flashed past him. The other was coming up from below, and Harry spun, once, twice. The Bludger strayed close to his head, then ended up smashing into the other one. Harry laughed and took off towards a distant gleam of gold.  
  
Malfoy was racing along beside him, near him, past him. The broom was faster, and Malfoy was a professional player, after all. Harry watched with nothing but admiration as Malfoy scooped up the Snitch and turned around to face him.  
  
A second later, Malfoy’s eyes widened.  
  
It could have been a trick. Harry would never know, since he was relying on his own instincts. He heeled forwards, ducking beneath the Bludgers, and then saw all four of them soaring straight for Malfoy.  
  
“ _Ventus!_ ” Harry cried at once, because it was the right move, and he knew that with all his Auror training. His wand whipped down at the same moment.  
  
A strong wind, blowing sideways from the right, caught the Bludgers and carried them over Harry’s head, and Malfoy’s, to smash into the wards that ornamented the side of the Quidditch pitch. Harry sighed in relief as he heard the harsh sparking and snarling of the magic, and the wards swarmed over the Bludgers and destroyed them.  
  
When they were utterly gone, Harry turned towards Malfoy. “Sorry about the real Bludger. I’ll pay for the one I destroyed, if you want.”  
  
Malfoy’s hair seemed to stir more with the breath rushing past his lips than the wind around him. Then he jerked his head abruptly and turned for the ground. Harry followed, mildly curious as to whether he was going to get a scolding for destroying the Bludger or saving Malfoy’s life.  
  
 _Or maybe a scolding for losing the game and disappointing him._ Malfoy would probably want a boyfriend who could challenge him more than that, if only so he would have a prettier ornament to show off when he went to parties.  
  
Malfoy leaped off his broom when it was still moving, and opened his hand. As the Snitch fluttered out, Broomy appeared and grabbed it, grabbed the broom, and disappeared with a soft inclination of his head. Harry let go of his broom and watched Malfoy in curiosity as Broomy cracked into being behind him, snatched the Nimbus, too, and then cracked out again.  
  
Malfoy stood with his head tilted away from Harry, his eyes closed in the manner of someone listening to invisible music. Then he leaped and whirled around in a way that made Harry crouch, hand instinctively on his wand.  
  
“You didn’t think about the inconvenience to me of having my Bludger destroyed,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry repeated. So it was to be a scolding about the Bludger after all.  
  
“You didn’t think about what I’ve already told you when it comes to dignity in the way I die.”  
  
Harry only raised his eyebrows. Malfoy wanted to combine scoldings, then, badly enough to ignore things like Harry being his “fiancé” now, which supposedly would make it okay for him to save Malfoy’s life.  
  
“And you lost the game.” Malfoy put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes.  
  
Harry nearly laughed, because this time he knew who Malfoy looked like: Molly Weasley confronting George about his latest prank that had exploded all over the Burrow when Bill and Fleur’s children sneaked it out of hiding.  
  
“Very sorry,” Harry said, and swept and held a long bow. It would help to hide his laughter, and Malfoy would probably be preening himself at the respect within a few minutes.  
  
“Why did you decide that you could use the wards on the edge of the Quidditch pitch to destroy the Bludger?”  
  
Harry did blink as he came up, but Malfoy seemed resigned to him being slow today. “Did I somehow damage them, too?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Malfoy said, and his voice had slowed down, too. “What I mean  _is_ , you couldn’t have  _known_ they would destroy  _a_ Bludger.”  
  
 _Commitment to accenting one word in every four, whether or not it makes his sentence sound strange. Impressive._ Harry did his best to achieve a contrite expression. Since he thought he’d last worn one in 1998, he wasn’t sure he succeeded. “Yes, I could,” he said. “I recognized them when we came out. They’re the sort that stop birds flying into the Quidditch pitch and hostile spells from the audience. Definitely powerful enough to end the magic on a Bludger.”  
  
“And why did you use  _that_ spell?”  
  
 _Only one word emphasized this time,_ Harry thought, and frowned at Malfoy.  _I disapprove of the consistency of his performance._ “Because it was the only one that would be strong enough to catch and move the Bludgers out of the way in time, while having a wand movement simple enough that I could do it in a few seconds.”  
  
Malfoy turned away again. Harry made a private bet with himself about how many words Malfoy would emphasize when he turned around this time, and was disappointed when Malfoy only said, “You came up with the right spell very fast.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I?” Harry thought this whole thing was weird. Malfoy had  _known_ he was an Auror. Even if Harry had never saved his life at the Quidditch game, he wouldn’t be able to ignore what the papers reported in a whirlwind of confetti and breathless sighs. “That’s the kind of thing I was trained for.”  
  
Malfoy took a step towards him, then checked and stood looking earnestly into Harry’s eyes. It was the same kind of unreadable earnestness he had shown Harry outside the party when Harry wanted to return the ring.  
  
“You don’t understand our proper roles in life,” Malfoy explained.  
  
“Of course I do,” Harry said, deciding that this was a prime opportunity to sabotage something that it sounded as though he wasn’t going to like. “You do what you want, and I stand around and admire you for it.”  
  
Malfoy reacted as though someone had tied his spine to an iron rail. “No,” he said. “ _I_  am a Quidditch player. I provide the grace and the speed and the beauty. And the money.”  
  
“One,” Harry muttered.  
  
“What?” Now apparently someone had taken the iron rail away again.  
  
“Oh, nothing,” said Harry, and smiled at him. “A private game I like to play when I’m bor—I’m sorry, when I lose track of what someone is saying because they’re using too many big words. You were saying.”  
  
“I only used words of two syllables or less.”  
  
“Yes, but all my strength has gone to my wand arm, with not much left for my brain,” Harry explained, and made it even more earnest.  
  
Malfoy eyed him. Harry eyed him back, and didn’t drop the dazzling smile. He was uncomfortable with the emotions that he thought would have covered Malfoy’s face otherwise. Everything between them was tolerable, even fun, as long as it was a game.  
  
If it turned into something serious, then Harry would be bound to a boring assignment that he might end up not doing his best job on because he would be worried about deceiving Malfoy, even in the interests of undercover work.  
  
“I think you have a  _measured_ amount of strength in your brain,” Malfoy finally said judiciously. “It could stand to increase.”  
  
 _One_ , Harry thought, but this time, Malfoy continued before Harry could make up his mind about how he was going to needle Malfoy.  
  
“It’s up to you to provide the glass,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Pardon?” Harry started the wand movements that would conjure a mirror, concerned that Malfoy had been without one too long and was going to faint from the lack of blood to the brain. Malfoy chopped down a restraining hand.   
  
“The mirror,” Malfoy said. “The reflection of me. The admiration for my speed and grace and beauty. And it’s up to you to take advantage of the money and provide me for ideas with spending it.”  
  
If he ever needed to Polyjuice himself as Malfoy in order to get something done, Harry thought, then he was going to remember Malfoy’s fondness for the word “provide.” He assumed another sincere expression and said, “But I can’t be a mirror. I’ve already saved your life.”  
  
“Hence,” Malfoy said, “the need for change. You must let me pamper you for an evening. Then maybe you will learn your proper glassly duties.”  
  
Harry would have reacted with outrage in many similar situations. But Malfoy had changed his perspective a little. Now he thought first how he could use laughter instead of righteous indignation.  
  
He clasped his hands in front of him and whispered, “Would this involve—fine meals?”  
  
“The  _finest_.” Malfoy was once again inviting Harry to inspect how clean his nostrils were, from the angle of his nose. Harry wondered if he had an elf called Snotty whose duties included cleaning them out.  
  
“Would it involve—a comfortable bed?”  
  
“It  _would_.”  
  
 _One each,_ Harry thought.  _Let’s see if I can make him stress both of them._  
  
“Would it involve—an even prettier ring?” He looked down at the diamond ring and sighed as he glanced back at Malfoy. “It’s just—I could use real gems instead of Transfigured ones, you know. There’s just something about a real one…”  
  
Malfoy took a step forwards. His eyes were fiery with challenge as he stroked the ring on Harry’s finger and then pulled his hand back.  
  
“ _Of course_.”  
  
 _Yes, I win,_  Harry thought, and smiled at Malfoy. “Then let’s go!”  
  
 _I’ll give the ring back when this is done, of course,_ Harry thought as Malfoy strutted into the house in front of him.  _But if I have to be here and acting ridiculous anyway, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get at least one good meal and one good night’s sleep out of it._


	6. What a Night on the Town

“You’re fussing more about these robes than you did about the ones I wore to the Crocodiles’ party,” Harry told Malfoy, holding his arms away from his sides as he examined himself in the vast mirror. They were once again in Malfoy’s bedroom, with the not-silver bed and the probably not-gold frame around the mirror gleaming in the faint candlelight. Malfoy bustled around him like Madam Malkin.  
  
He could probably have a successful robe shop, Harry thought. He certainly had the glare of contempt that said the other person’s hemlines and sleeves were all wrong down pat.  
  
“Of course I am,” Malfoy said, his words almost indistinguishable around his wand, which he had clutched in his mouth. His hands were busy measuring lengths of conjured fabric against Harry’s Auror robes. He shook his head now and threw away one that Harry didn’t know why he’d bothered with. It was bright blue, not at all close to red. On the other hand, there were also scraps of cloth that looked red to Harry on the floor, so he didn’t know why he would trust his judgment anyway. “We’re about to be seen in  _public_.”  
  
He paused and stared down at a mustard-yellow scrap against Harry’s robes. Harry stared at it, too, but it didn’t reveal its secrets to him at all.  
  
 _Poor Malfoy, getting hypnotized by cloth. He probably shouldn’t open a robe shop at all, since he would stand gaping in front of the wares._  
  
“The Crocodiles’ party wasn’t public?”  
  
His words did Malfoy the favor of breaking him out of his hypnotism. He shook his head briskly and moved away from Harry to put the scraps of fabric down on a shelf. “Of course not.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Malfoy’s eyebrows did the little dance they did whenever someone ventured to disagree with him. Harry waited patiently, feeling like someone standing out a waltz.  
  
“Because it involved a limited number of people seeing you.” Malfoy’s voice was slow, but Harry didn’t know if that came from pity, contempt, or abstraction in the fabric again.  _A wonderfully complicated person is Draco Malfoy,_ Harry thought, and grinned at himself in the mirror. “This will involve potentially unlimited numbers of people.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said, and pretended to consider. “More people might have passed through that party than would through Diagon Alley in the space of an hour.”  
  
Malfoy went as still as a heron that had spotted a frog. Harry, disinclined to play the part of the frog, turned innocently to look at him.  
  
“You  _think_ ,” said Malfoy, and Harry promptly began counting emphasized words in his head again, “that we are going anywhere  _near_ Diagon Alley.”  
  
“Well, yes,” said Harry. “Because that’s where the most restaurants are. And you’re not stupid.”  
  
“Explain to me the immediate cause of my non-stupidity, Potter.” Malfoy’s hand was resting on his robe collar now, as if he would like to twist it sideways and choke Harry with it.  
  
It cost Harry some considerable violence to his instincts to stand there and slowly and naturally breathe instead of turning around to deal with Malfoy. His voice was calm and sedate, though. “Because you would be stupid to try and take an Auror to a restaurant in Knockturn Alley.” He let the words linger between them, then twisted away, _incidentally_  taking Malfoy’s hand away from his robe collar, to beam sociably at Malfoy. “And I know you’re not stupid.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him with hooded eyes. Harry stared back in interest, wondering if Malfoy was trying to hypnotize him or something.  
  
 _He really needs one of those swinging crystals and an evil laugh if he’s going to do that,_ Harry thought, then reconsidered. Malfoy might still possess an evil laugh. Harry had certainly thought so at Hogwarts.  
  
“It’s not Diagon Alley,” Malfoy whispered. “Do me the honor of assuming I wouldn’t date anyone stupid, either.”  
  
Harry tried to work that one out in his head, gave up, and then said, “But I must be stupid, if I’m assuming that all restaurants are in Diagon Alley. Or am I stupid in thinking _you_ would go there and mingle with the peasants?”  
  
Malfoy frowned and moved a step closer to him. “It’s not me and peasants only. I do acknowledge other kinds of people in the world.”  
  
“Yes? Like who?”  _This ought to be interesting._  
  
“Like the ones I choose to date, and my teammates, and my rivals in the Quidditch league.” Malfoy put a hand on Harry’s ear and turned his head to the side, as if he wanted to examine his eyes or jaw. Harry had to clench his teeth into each other to keep from laughing. It was the way someone in Diagon Alley would examine a broom. “Why would I date other people if I thought they were peasants?”  
  
He picked up another snatch of fabric and held it out as if he was almost hoping something would make him wake up and decide that it wasn’t right after all. But instead, he laid it against Harry’s skin, and nodded, and breathed, “Perfect.”  
  
Harry looked down. The cloth was exactly the same shade of blue as one Malfoy had discarded earlier, and he shook his head. “I’ll never understand your taste.”  
  
Malfoy drew back and stared him in the eyes. “Try,” he said. “Otherwise, you would never understand your own fascination, and that would be a pity.”  
  
Harry blinked slowly. Then he shook his head.  
  
“Is that a refusal to try?” Malfoy’s voice had gone low in a way that could be dangerous, and he gripped the side of Harry’s head. Harry hadn’t even noticed his hand moving.  
  
 _I’m here to scout for any threats to him, but let’s keep in mind that he’s physically strong and a skilled duelist,_ Harry thought, and decided to tell the truth. “Not that. It’s just that you gave me one way to respond to the rumors the papers spread, with laughter. And this is another way.”  
  
Malfoy blinked in a way that suggested puzzlement was for other people. “Not many are likely to admire you in the pure way I do.”  
  
 _Pure_ , Harry thought, and wondered for a moment if Malfoy considered his admiration pure because it no longer contained the hatred it would have back at Hogwarts. But being honest about one thing didn’t mean Harry had to be honest about  _every_ thing.   
  
“No,” he said gently, and waited until Malfoy looked at him instead of his inner thoughts as he tried to work out what Harry meant. “The consideration that their words might be sincere.”  
  
Malfoy looked at him again, then stepped back and sniffed. “I need to enchant your robes this color.”  
  
And he did, creating a shade of blue that Harry barely had time to study before Malfoy grabbed his shoulders and spun him towards the mirror. “Dare to tell me  _now_ that my taste is common,” he breathed.  
  
Harry could see no difference between the color he wore now and half the colors Malfoy had discarded as unsuitable. But he was hungry, and he suspected arguing with Malfoy would mean standing here for another six hours while Malfoy lectured him about the depth of the sheen and the hang of the cloth.  
  
“This is nice,” he said.  
  
“You will need to improve your vocabulary, as well,” said Malfoy. “ _Nice_. The first word might be  _spectacular_ , the second  _impressive,_ the third  _astounding_ …”  
  
 _Four_ , Harry thought happily, and trailed behind Malfoy as he made his way to the Floo, still gesturing and talking.  
  
*  
  
“Now, you can see.”  
  
“It’s a very nice view,” Harry agreed, peering out the shining windows in front of him. They had a pattern of silver worked into their glass that was meant to mimic patterns of frost—he thought. Beyond them shone an absolutely pure, clear blue lake. Harry wished Malfoy’s taste ran more to that sort of blue. That was a shade of color he wouldn’t have minded wearing.  
  
“ _Nice_ ,” said Malfoy witheringly.  
  
The restaurant was in another country, Harry thought, from the amount of Floo-hopping they’d done. Well, that was all right. Malfoy’s attacker would have had trouble following.  
  
They were in the restaurant now, what looked like the single solitary building on one mountain out of a range that sloped down to the lake. The lower slopes glowed with green. Harry thought it was also very nice, and better than the robes he’d worn before. Slopes rose above them, rugged and shining with snow.  
  
Harry considered that that was also nice.  
  
The tables were glittering with washes of diamonds and emeralds scattered across and stuck to the surface. Harry’s main thought on that was how uncomfortable it would be to accidentally press your hand down on top of, or how hard to balance a plate or glass on. Malfoy gave him another withering glance when he dared to mention it, and touched his wand to the table. Holes opened up among the gems. Silver flagons rose. They were jointed in such a way that Harry saw they could tip like flowers and let you sip from them. The plates that sat in front of them were similarly immobile, and made of what looked like gold.  
  
Harry nodded and smiled. “How nice.”  
  
It was probably fortunate that a human server actually came to take their order, or Harry strongly suspected he would have found Malfoy’s wand jammed into his ear. He leaned back in the chair and watched.  
  
Malfoy ordered in a strong, decisive tone, with flourishing gestures of his hands that Harry suspected he calculated down to the precise centimeter of movement, and _knew_ he practiced in front of the mirror. That Harry couldn’t understand the language he spoke and so didn’t know what Malfoy was ordering didn’t matter much. The food in this place wouldn’t dare to be other than—  
  
“ _Don’t_ say it again.”  
  
Harry blinked, only to realize that the server was gone and Malfoy had apparently homed in on what he might say about the plates and goblets. Harry decided it was time for a countermove. If he’d become that predictable, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance of entertaining Malfoy long enough for the other Aurors working on the case to catch his possible assassin.  
  
So Harry touched the goblet and let it tilt enough that he could drink from it but the liquid wouldn’t run out, and murmured, “ _Aguamenti_.”  
  
Clean, clear water poured from his wand into the glass. Harry took a long drink, shutting his eyes in enjoyment, to lessen the chances that he would burst out laughing and soak the table while he had his mouth full.  
  
“ _Potter_.” This time, Malfoy sounded aghast.  
  
“Was I not supposed to do that?” Harry sipped again from the water, this time causing a slurping noise that made a few heads turn towards him. But they turned away again immediately, Harry noticed. Well, they probably didn’t have to  _know_ a person like him, as Malfoy would probably put it. “Sorry. I was just so thirsty.” He sipped again.  
  
At least, he did until Malfoy waved his wand and banished the water. “You’re supposed to wait until they bring a drink for you,” Malfoy said between teeth so clenched that it was a wonder he could get them apart enough for Harry to hear the words. “Not just—grab and make your own.”  
  
“But I’m  _thirsty_ ,” said Harry, shrilly, and saw the horrified look Malfoy gave him before he could stop himself. It wasn’t enough that he had brought a peasant to dinner, he was probably thinking. It was a  _whiny_ peasant.  
  
Malfoy shook his head and seemed to calm himself down with a huge effort. “The wine will be coming in seconds. See?” he added, and Harry turned his head to see red bubbles forming in his goblet. They stopped long before they were in danger of tumbling over the tipped lip.  
  
Harry leaned forwards and sipped. He had no idea what it would taste like since he had no idea what wine Malfoy had ordered.  
  
Now he knew. He spluttered a little and said, “This is nasty.”  
  
Malfoy’s hand froze on the stem of his goblet for a moment, and he closed his eyes. Harry grinned. He liked the way that Malfoy managed to convey his exasperation with this horrified silence.   
  
“No,” Malfoy said. “It’s an acquired taste. Try it again. Slowly. You’ll like it.”  
  
“Why did you order something for me that’s an acquired taste?” Harry sipped again, and shook his head decisively. “No. Sorry. Still don’t like it.”  
  
Malfoy leaned in and put a hand on Harry’s wrist, searching Harry’s eyes deeply with his own. Harry stared and blinked back. He might have stuck out his tongue, but he didn’t think he’d get away with it. Malfoy was probably hovering on the edge of tolerance as he was. Harry wondered if he should try the wine again.  
  
But Malfoy pulled back a minute later, and there was a faint, satisfied smile on his lips. He turned around and picked up his fork at the exact moment that napkins and food materialized on the table. Harry poked at the nearest napkin, to be sure it was made of cloth instead of snow. It shimmered with such a pure white color that it seemed to be, except for the delicate silver embroidery in the corners.  
  
“I knew I couldn’t be mistaken in you.” Malfoy was cutting up his food with a satisfied air that made Harry regret the goblets were rooted to the table. “You have an inner magnificence that peers out through your face when you don’t try to hide it.”  
  
Harry went still and stared at him. The small bites of food he had taken so far—a few spoonfuls of what looked like tomato soup with small sprigs of green floating in it and some meat so tender it was sliding off the bone onto the bottom layer of soft, fluffy bread—probably lingered in his mouth. He didn’t care.  
  
“Malfoy,” he said gently.  
  
“Hmmm? Yes?” Malfoy looked at Harry serenely through the steam curling up from his soup.  
  
Harry reached out and put a tender hand on his arm. “Are you listening to yourself?” he whispered. “Did you know how much you need help, or is it a new revelation?”  
  
Malfoy shook his head at him. “You don’t look at yourself from the outside all the time. You can’t. So stop telling me that you know yourself.”  
  
Well,  _that_ was insulting. Harry leaned his elbows on the table—making Malfoy’s eyebrows creep up his forehead—and said, “I know myself.”  
  
“Did you know that you would enjoy being out with me?” Malfoy gestured around the restaurant. “Here? Did you know you would enjoy the wine?”  
  
“I don’t enjoy the wine.”  
  
“I notice that you didn’t deny the rest.” Malfoy really had the most infuriating smile.   
  
“Very well, then I’ll say it now.” Harry wanted to be good at this case, he wanted to protect Malfoy from whoever wished him harm, he didn’t even want to piss Malfoy off that much as long as it would let him go on being entertaining. But this was enough. He pushed back from the table, noticing that Malfoy’s eyes had swiftly darkened again. “I told you what I think of this, and it’s not good enough.”  
  
“The restaurant?” Malfoy looked stricken.  
  
“No,” said Harry. “My vocabulary. The way I talk and think and feel.” He had just seen a way to twist things around so that he might not piss Malfoy off so much but would still get out of here, and it made him feel pretty proud of himself. “You don’t like the words I use to describe something. What makes you think I  _believe_ this nonsense that you keep spouting about how inwardly magnificent I am, or whatever you want me to believe right now? You don’t give a damn about what I’m really like. You only want something you can mold in your image.”  
  
Malfoy stood, but slowly, not in a way that suggested he was going after his wand. Harry let his own hand rest on his wand anyway, just in case, but it would probably look like he just had it on his hip.  
  
“Glassly duties,” Malfoy whispered.  
  
“What?” Harry glared at him, hating that he’d been caught off-guard.  
  
“You’re doing exactly what I asked of you,” said Malfoy, and blinked, his eyelashes catching the light as they rose and fell, making it look as if he had little diamonds on _them_ , too. “Reflecting me back to myself.” He paused and shook his head. “I can’t say I like the image, and I would have preferred a different setting for the first jewel you offered me then this restaurant, but. Well. I can’t blame you for doing as I asked of you.”  
  
Then, while Harry was still gaping at him, Malfoy bowed and extended his hand. “Would you like to sit down and have the server come back?” he asked, the picture of composed politeness. “This time, I’ll translate for you and  _you_ can order what  _you_  like.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. But Malfoy went on standing there with his hand out, as if he didn’t care at all about the stares coming their way  _this_ time. His smile had begun to wear a bit thin at the edges, though.  
  
Harry searched his eyes. They had the same frustratingly incomprehensible look that he had seen Malfoy wear before.  
  
Malfoy might be joking. Or he might be so self-involved as to really  _believe_ the loads of bollocks that he’d dumped on Harry.  
  
Harry found out that he didn’t know which one was true. And, more to the point, he was hungry and the food had been delicious and he didn’t know how to get home on his own from the restaurant.  
  
“If you won’t act so horrified the next time I mess up,” Harry said, and rolled his eyes, and took Malfoy’s hand because it was becoming obvious that Malfoy wouldn’t move unless he did, and let Malfoy help him back into the chair. “I  _will_ mess up, you know.”  
  
“One,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
Harry stared at him, and Malfoy smiled back at him and touched his wand to the table. A server immediately came hurrying towards him, and Malfoy turned the bland smile on the server and rattled something else in the language of this place, then turned towards Harry.  
  
The revelation burst on Harry like a star exploding.  
  
Malfoy meant what he’d said, at least about letting Harry order dinner like this. And Harry would get a good meal the way he’d thought he would.  
  
And  _Malfoy had a sense of humor._  
  
Harry smiled back with true appreciation and started explaining what he wanted, throwing in “Peacocks’ tongues and stuffed larks” just to see if Malfoy would translate it and the restaurant had it. And Malfoy translated without a blink, and the server nodded without a blink, and the food was on Harry’s plate a few minutes later.  
  
Harry found out that peacocks’ tongues were nasty and stuffed larks were nice, and more than that: this game was worth playing out to the end. Not just because Kingsley had assigned him to it, either.  
  
He wanted to see where the hell Malfoy’s sense of humor and madcap sense of inappropriateness would take him.


	7. Why the Laughter

Harry rolled over and mashed his face into the silken pillows that the Malfoy house-elves had arranged at the head of his bed. Or maybe he was supposed to call them “face-bearers” or some other absurd Malfoy coinage, the same way he was supposed to call grey silver.  
  
 _Or is it silver that I’m supposed to call grey? I can’t remember anymore._ Harry rolled back and over and grinned at the ceiling, at the middle of a fantastic, slowly changing enchantment that showed a dragon wandering through mountains.  _Technically I’m still on assignment, but I get paid to look at things like this and sleep late. It’s pretty—_  
  
Then something hit the enchantments around the Manor hard enough to make Harry’s teeth ache, and he was out of the bed in seconds.   
  
The only thing he had to wear were the Transfigured Auror robes that Malfoy had turned blue. Harry grabbed them and spun around, trying to Apparate before he remembered. Then he had to run across the vast expanse of the bedroom to get to the main doors.  
  
 _How did his ancestors handle it when they had to escape from the rustic torch-wielding mob? Well, they probably had private lifts or something._  
  
The attack struck again as Harry finally wrenched the damned door open and staggered out onto the landing. Corridors stretched up and down before him, a maze so thick that Harry had no idea which direction he should go to see outside, let alone get there quickly.  
  
He gathered his magic and snapped, “ _Point Me_ the danger,” only to have the wand spin wildly around in his palm. Harry stared at it, then gave up. Probably some poncey Malfoy protective spells so no one would know who was sneaking through what secret passage.  
  
Another jolt, and this time Harry thought he could pinpoint what direction it was coming from. He turned and ran wildly, feeling his breath buck through his lungs like a wild thing. Well, it would just have to wait, wouldn’t it? He had miles of corridors to get through.  
  
Right and left and right, and then Harry was standing unexpectedly on a huge balcony that overlooked the entrance hall. He could see hazy, wavering magic through the windows that looked out on the grounds, and hear the wailing of terrified house-elves.  
  
No time to go down all the stairs, which in any case included stupid landings where someone could pose to show off their robes. Harry leaped over the side of the balcony and cast a bunch of spells as he did, making himself fall more slowly and keeping his robes down from off his face and easing the impact on his feet and knees as he landed.  
  
When he landed, he sprinted for the front door, only to have a house-elf appear in front of him. Harry veered to the side to avoid running the little creature over, but it showed right back up again, hands spread and arms waving up and down appealingly. “Master Harry must be finding Master Malfoy! I is defending the house!”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. Admittedly, he hadn’t been inside many pure-blood Manors when they were getting attacked, but he’d never heard of elves sharing in a house’s defense before.  
  
“Potter, why are you running around being ridiculous? Leave the defeat of the boors up to Doory. It’s her job.”  
  
Harry stopped, looked up, said, “These are potentially dangerous criminals,” and leaped over Doory’s head when it seemed she would still block him. The elf pursued him, squeaking in distress, but by then, Harry had the front doors open and he was outside.  
  
The white waves of dancing, boiling lightning made him stop and stare. The hazy shapes of several people were standing outside the gates, cloaked in basic glamours that would make it hard to identify them.   
  
But then he began to grin.  _Damn. I should have remembered some of my own basic training and what it required._  
  
And, specifically, the kinds of pranks that he and his fellow Auror trainees had sometimes played on their instructors.  
  
Harry spent a moment gathering his will. He needed to time his spell precisely even if the attack was much less serious than he’d thought. He waited until a fourth thunderous impact had torn through the air and the wizards beyond the gates were raising their arms and wands for another try.  
  
Then he said and willed at the same moment, as hard as he had ever willed anything, “ _Finite Incantatem._ ”  
  
The flashes of thunder and lightning dissolved at once, and the people beyond the gates reeled back. Harry thought he heard a few yells of astonishment, but he didn’t pause to listen. He rushed straight at them, and they promptly began scattering and Apparating.  
  
Harry leaped over the top of the gates with the aid of another spell and did his best to grab the trailing robe of one wizard in front of him. That wizard snapped left, though, and someone from the right cast a spell that forced Harry to hop, and then they were all gone. Harry turned around in the dust, shaking his head.   
  
No one came out after him. Probably Doory was supposed to stay in the house and defend her masters from there, Harry thought, as he entered back through the gates and trudged up to the doors.  
  
His mind was on the report he would have to make for Kingsley, and so he didn’t notice when Malfoy swept down the stair and paused grandly on one of the landings. At least, he assumed Malfoy had done that and he didn’t notice, both because it was the sort of thing Malfoy would do and because Harry earned a disgusted click of Malfoy’s tongue when he swept past the staircase.  
  
Harry paused and blinked, looking back.  
  
Malfoy folded his arms. “How did you defeat their spells?” he said, firing the questions at Harry as if he thought Harry was in a conspiracy with the attackers.  
  
“Illusion,” said Harry.  
  
Malfoy let his arms fall in what was apparent outrage at a non-answer. “No  _Finite Incantatem_ that I ever saw was an illusion,” he said coldly.  
  
“No,” said Harry. “They were  _using_ illusions. I figured that out when I noticed that there wasn’t any feeling of static in the air, the way there would be if they were summoning real lightning. And then the thunder made the kind of noise that spells make when they’re exploding in mid-air, not actually slamming against the protective enchantments.”  
  
Malfoy came one step down. “I felt the house shake.”  
  
“From the concussion of the noise. Not actual blows.”  
  
“Why did you let them escape?” Malfoy came down another step.  
  
Harry shrugged a little. “I didn’t mean to. I did try to trap and corner them, but they were probably too panicked when they realized I was actually charging them and I’d broken their glamours.” He frowned. He should at least have tried to catch a glimpse of a face. His  _Finite_ would have broken the illusions they wore to hide those, too.  
  
“Why did you do  _that_?” Malfoy was on the second step from the bottom, and pointing dramatically up at the balcony that Harry had leaped from. Then again, Harry wasn’t sure he could point other than dramatically.  
  
Harry looked up, expecting to see that he’d broken some of the railing, but the balcony was still the same ornate monstrosity it had been earlier. Harry wrinkled his nose a little and looked at Malfoy. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything to it.”  
  
“You  _leaped_.” Malfoy must have felt really strongly about that, because he was on the bottom step by then, and then on the floor, and he came towards Harry with the fervor of a courting bull. “My fiancé doesn’t  _leap_.”  
  
“Two,” Harry breathed at him, and Malfoy drew his head back and tried to stand stiff and outraged. Mainly outraged.  
  
“He doesn’t,” said Malfoy. “Or she doesn’t. Let me assure you that I could replace you.”  
  
“Oh, all right,” said Harry, and shrugged, mainly to watch Malfoy’s eyes widen. He reached for the diamond ring on his finger. “I suppose it was fun while it lasted. But I can’t have a fiancé who gets upset about me leaping.”  
  
Malfoy visibly swallowed, and then said, “You don’t need to do it all the time. No more than once a month.”  
  
“Once a week,” Harry said, gravely. “It’s  _vitally_ important that I leap over balconies on a weekly basis to catch fleeing criminals. And yes, I know that was one,” he added, before Malfoy could.  
  
Malfoy stood there and struggled with it. Harry watched him with glee and compassion, with the glee being like the desert and the compassion being like the oasis.  
  
Malfoy finally held up his head and spoke with a quiet dignity Harry hadn’t expected from him. “I don’t want to damage your reputation in the papers. Therefore, it is appropriate that we negotiate a little longer and reach an acceptable compromise.”  
  
“I thought we had,” said Harry, widening his eyes. “Leaping once a week.”  
  
“Once a fortnight.”  
  
“If you can’t have a fiancé who leaps at all,” Harry said, “why is a fortnight better?”  
  
“That gives you one day to leap, and me thirteen days to recover.”  
  
Harry laughed before he could stop himself. Malfoy gave him a thin smile and moved a step closer. Harry let his hands hang relaxed at his sides. He didn’t think Malfoy was going to hurt him, but he was interested to see what he  _would_ do.   
  
Malfoy reached out and clasped the hand where Harry wore the diamond ring. Harry waited, still, while Malfoy turned the hand back and forth. If he was going to take the ring, at least it wasn’t in public, and that might mean Harry could make a better report to Kingsley than if his cover had been completely blown.  
  
“My dear,” said Malfoy, in a level whisper that Harry had to admit he would have leaned closer to hear if they were in a particularly crowded place, “you can leap more easily than you can do some other things. I trust you’ll remember that.”  
  
“What other things?” Harry moved nearer and leaned a little on Malfoy, mainly to see what he’d do. This was the closest they’d been, even when dancing at the Crocodiles’ ball. Harry had thought at the time that Malfoy wouldn’t keep up a similar level of intensity in private, and so far that had been true.  
  
That made him all the more interested to see what would happen when the level of intensity  _did_ climb. He put his hand over Malfoy’s heart and listened.  
  
“You were looking for something?” Malfoy could carve chunks from the air with his words, but his heartbeat was still quickening under Harry’s touch, and Malfoy pulled in a breath a little faster than he should have.  
  
“I was hearing something,” Harry said, and met and held his eyes. “But I suppose you would say that’s not important enough to take note of. It probably sped up when I leaped over the balcony, too. Did it?”  
  
He pulled his hand back and away.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes followed the motion of his arm as if compelled. Then he shook his head sharply and seemed to wake up. “You leave much to be desired as a fiancé.”  
  
“But you already agreed that I could leap once a fortnight if I wanted to,” Harry said, and fluttered his eyelashes at Malfoy. “I think that means you’re stuck with me. Dragon.”  
  
Malfoy caught his wrist this time, and pulled his hand close enough that Harry thought it would touch his chest in a second. But instead, Malfoy leaned towards him and spoke in a soft, intimate tone. Harry felt his own pulse speeding up without really wanting it to.  
  
“I’m going to find out why you’re sticking close to me, Potter,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “Why you’re acting as though you have the  _right_ to say anything you want and expect me to tolerate it.”  
  
“Well, that would be nice,” said Harry at once. His heartbeat was speeding up for a different reason now, as he thought of the weird way that so many people around Malfoy simply accepted what he wanted to do and the way he went about things. Here was the chance to get real answers from Malfoy, maybe. “As long as you tell me what right you have to drag me around and introduce me as your fiancé.”  
  
Malfoy took a long step back from him. He was frowning. “You don’t  _know_?”  
  
“Nope,” Harry drawled, not taking his eyes away from Malfoy.  
  
“But you must,” Malfoy said, and shook his head, eyes going past Harry for a minute. Harry turned to glance over his shoulder, but there was nothing there except blank stone. So the Malfoys had missed one place on the wall where they could have hung a sneering portrait. Shame. “Why would you have gone along with this otherwise?”  
  
Harry immediately focused on Malfoy. Here was his first indication that Malfoy  _knew_ it was strange to make people do what he wanted them to, and haul them around like objects, and position them like statues. If Harry could just get him to  _admit_ it…  
  
“Why would you have accepted my ring if you didn’t want to be my fiancé?” Malfoy was almost whispering now, his fingers reaching out to brush down Harry’s face and push his hair behind his ears. “Why would you have accompanied me to the party? Why would you have asked me to take you back after almost flinging my ring in my face?”  
  
“I went along with it because I thought it would be fun,” said Harry. He hoped that this would get to a real conversation, one that might include any of Malfoy’s suspicions on who would want to curse his broom. “And I didn’t want to make a lot of waves. But then it didn’t stay as much fun as I thought it would be.”  
  
“Then why come back?”  
  
Harry hesitated once. Maybe he ought to tell Malfoy the truth. He hadn’t so far only because he had thought Malfoy was unlikely to let Harry stay close if he did. But Malfoy hadn’t done anything criminally wrong. He might know things he didn’t know he knew. Probably best to just make him aware of the Auror concerns about the person who had tried to kill him on his broom.  
  
Harry opened his mouth.  
  
And then Malfoy pointed a finger at him and appeared almost to dance in glee.  
  
“I know. I know, of  _course_ ,” said Malfoy, and this was the most annoying emphasized word Harry had ever heard from him. “Because you found yourself falling more and more helplessly in love with me. You couldn’t help yourself.” He didn’t speak as if he was testing out a theory and wanted Harry to answer him. He spoke like someone who was absolutely, smugly, in no doubt about what he was saying. He reached out and touched Harry’s hand quickly. “And perhaps because you wanted better gifts from me. I can’t blame you. I am irresistible  _and_ rich.”  
  
He straightened up and spent a moment studying Harry. “But I meant what I said about you needing to spend more time reflecting me like a glass. You’re spending too much time saving my life and not enough time doing other things.”  
  
“Um,” said Harry weakly, because the mere existence of such arrogance was blowing his mind. “Saving lives is what I’m trained to do, as an Auror.”  
  
“Yes, but you must have saved dozens of lives,” said Malfoy, and shook his head a little, the frown that he’d last worn when examining all those pieces of fabric on his face. “Not to disparage the speed and skill you show when you do it.” This time, the sheer condescension of the smile stole Harry’s ability to respond. “I want you to do something for me that you don’t do for anyone else.”  
  
“Listen to your nonsense?”  
  
“Nonsense,” said Malfoy back at him, and Harry thought he was going to get an indignant retort. But then Malfoy continued, in what was probably the Malfoy-world equivalent of a reasonable tone, “How can you listen to any nonsense I say if it comes from other people? Do use your words correctly, Harry. Listen to me. Reflect me. Focus more on  _me_ , and less on these criminals that you think you need to chase around.”  
  
He reached out and took Harry’s hand again, beaming at him. “And in return, you can leap over balcony railings once a week,” he added, in what was probably, for him, a fit of unprecedented generosity.  
  
Harry stood very, very still, because he had never known such an intense need to punch someone, and his fists would probably move of their own free will if he allowed them any chance.  
  
Malfoy sighed a little, apparently put-upon. “Oh, very  _well_. You may leap over balcony railings once every three days.” He nodded at Harry’s feet. “But any more than that, and I won’t be responsible for replacing your boots when they wear out.”  
  
Harry’s anger drained away again, and a sensation like light suffused him. It didn’t stop, either. It bubbled out of his lips as giggles, and he bent over and began snort-howling into his hands.  
  
Malfoy…honestly  _didn’t understand_. He thought anyone would be on top of the world to date him. He thought Harry’s protests were all ineffectual because he was so lovable. He thought everything he said was true.  
  
It was an arrogance so colossal that Harry had to admire it, the way he had admired the sheer stupidity of some of Malfoy’s plots in school. And he could fight it, or he could plan to be there for the moment it really cracked and crumbled.  
  
Because he could make dents in it. The way he had “persuaded” Malfoy to let him jump off balconies more often was proof of that.  
  
Maybe he would have to leave before that happened, because the case might be solved. But Harry hoped not. He hoped he would get to see Malfoy step out of his egg and come face to face with reality, and Harry planned to enjoy every last minute of it.  
  
“There’s only so much laughing in relief at your reprieve that you need to  _do_ , Harry.”  
  
Malfoy’s voice was getting politely exasperated. Harry straightened up again, and gave him the best imitation of a besotted look he could muster.  
  
“That’s what you say, Dragon.”  
  
Malfoy moved in closer still and took his arm, turning him around to escort him towards the stairs. His breath was warm and he was once again nearer than he needed to be, but Harry didn’t care, because it helped to keep him from going into hysterics.  
  
“It  _is_ what I say,” Malfoy said. “And you might as well alter your consonants a bit and call me Draco.”  
  
Harry lowered his voice on purpose. “Whatever you say, Draco.”  
  
A flush surged up Malfoy’s cheeks, and he dropped Harry’s arm and strode aside. “You’ll accompany me to practice today,” he called over his shoulder. “Time to see how you fly in the middle of a real team.”  
  
Harry stood there a second. Then he followed, grinning.  
  
So there was a way to crack Malfoy’s pride that didn’t depend on waiting for the stars to align just right.  _Flirting_ with him would do it.  
  
And Harry fully intended to exploit this new discovery.


	8. Why the Falcons Will Not Admit to Practicing With Harry Potter

“I understand that you never made the choice to try for a professional Quidditch team, Potter.”   
  
It was the Chaser, Jessica Cassel, who had told him about Malfoy’s tendency to Transfigure people into dating partners. Harry nodded at her and went about pulling on the informal gear that the Falcons wore when practicing. “No, I never did. I wanted to be an Auror, so that was what I did.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Harry grinned at her even as he flexed his fingers to test that the gloves, borrowed from Malfoy, would fit well enough for him to actually use them. “I just told you. Because I wanted to.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that.” Cassel rolled her eyes and flopped down on the bench that stood along the wall of the practice room. Harry thought she was watching his diamond ring, maybe trying to estimate how rich it made him, and he obligingly turned his hand over so she could do the maths more easily. Cassel promptly flushed and looked at his face. “Why did you want to be an Auror instead of a professional Quidditch player?”  
  
 _Ah_. This was something Harry had enjoyed even before Malfoy taught him the trick of laughing at the papers. And he didn’t need any convoluted plan, the way Malfoy would have, to bewilder people.  
  
“To catch Dark wizards.”  
  
Cassel blinked. They all did. Then she said, “But you did that during the war,” like they all did.  
  
“No,” Harry told her patiently. “During the war, I ran around, got chased, cursed people, watched my mentor die, and walked into the Forbidden Forest to let Voldemort kill me.” He examined the wall so that he wouldn’t have to see her flinch from Voldemort’s name, if she did, and get impatient with her. “And if you want to extend the timeline back into my childhood years, then I got to kill a basilisk and destroy an evil diary and prevent Voldemort from getting hold of the Philosopher’s Stone and free my godfather and watch him die. But that’s not the same thing as getting to arrest Dark wizards.”  
  
“You like the arresting part most of all, don’t you.”  
  
 _Well. Perhaps she’s smarter than that question made her look, after all._ Harry eyed Cassel with approval. “Yes. I never got to do that. I was fighting manifestations of Voldemort’s power, or they got away, or they died. Or maybe someone else arrested them,” he had to add, thinking of some of the Death Eaters he’d fought at the Battle of Hogwarts, who had later ended up in Ministry cells. “Either way,  _I_ wanted to be the one to stop them from hurting people.”  
  
Cassel looked thoughtful as she tugged on her boot. Then she said, “You can’t be good at Quidditch unless you want to catch the Snitch as badly as that.”  
  
“One reason I never went in for it, yes,” Harry agreed, and then grinned and picked up his equipment. “But I’m not playing Seeker today. I’m playing Beater.” It was partially because Malfoy had insisted on Harry showing him how he could—or “couldn’t”—do all the positions on the team. Harry had agreed because he wanted the chance to be close to the Bludgers if someone tried to interfere with them again.  
  
Cassel whistled slowly. “I never heard you were particularly strong.”  
  
“Oh, I’m not,” Harry said, and left her to wheel over the questions in her head as he walked to the door. He loved doing that, too.  
  
*  
  
 _I’m not strong in the way Crabbe and Goyle were._  
  
Harry leaned away from the Bludger which one of the Falcons’ usual Beaters had hit to seek him out and “show what he was made of.”  
  
 _I’m just the bloody best you’ve ever seen on a broom._  
  
Harry reached out and tapped the Bludger flying past him with his borrowed bat, sending it ricocheting back towards the Beater. Then he twisted upside-down and knocked the Bludger that he’d been patrolling with in a slightly different direction.  
  
The Beater, a hulky bloke named Caleb Sparkman, seemed to think he only had “his” Bludger to deal with. He sneered at Harry and opened his mouth, probably to say something obnoxious like “you missed.”  
  
Then Harry’s Bludger hit the back end of his tilted broom.  
  
Sparkman tumbled end-over-end down towards the pitch, one of the broom spins that was the hardest to get out of. Harry followed in a more leisurely way, hitting the Bludgers into each other so they orbited in a tight circle. It was the tactic usually used to get them back into the box at the end of a game.  
  
Cassel hurtled past him, holding the Quaffle and grinning. Harry tilted his head back to look for Malfoy.  
  
He was hovering above, shaking his head. “Any ordinary Beater would have gone after a teammate the minute he saw him falling,” he said, and then turned and shot to the other end of the pitch before Harry could point out he wasn’t an ordinary Beater, and Sparkman hadn’t been treating him much like a teammate.  
  
Harry blinked, then shrugged and batted the Bludgers into the box. He would wait for Sparkman or the other Beater, whose name Harry thought was Lister, to decide if they still wanted to play with him before he let them out again.  
  
He was close enough, though, especially with five people at the other end of the pitch fussing over Sparkman and one hovering over Harry with his eyes fixed on his lonely destiny of autographs and tea, to cast a spell that would check the Bludgers for any foreign enchantment. He didn’t find anything. The spells on the Bludgers were supposed to make them fly and chase humans and hit, but not hard enough to kill.   
  
Harry sat back thoughtfully. He wondered if the person who had tried to assassinate Malfoy on the Quidditch pitch had been working only on the broom after all, instead of broom and Bludgers as he’d thought.  
  
A shout interrupted him. Harry looked up. Cassel was bouncing the Quaffle in the crook of her arm and grinning.  
  
“Think you have the ability to challenge me?” she asked.  
  
“Not think,  _know_ ,” Harry said, and kicked his broom towards her.  
  
Cassel whistled. “You may find us a little harder to catch than a Dark wizard,” she said, and gathered the other Chasers in with her eyes. Both were smaller and more lithe than she was, a dark-haired woman named Anna Grey and a grinning man whose real name Harry didn’t know; the others just called them Jester.  
  
“But I won’t be chasing you,” Harry pointed out, peacefully. “I’ll be chasing the Quaffle.”  
  
“That’s what  _you_ think,” Cassel said, and she whistled a specific signal. Grey and Jester spread out in a triangle formation around her, and Cassel dramatically held up the Quaffle, then tossed it in a high, spinning arc.  
  
Harry rose up straight through the middle of the formation and grabbed the Quaffle as it began to fall. Jester, whose broom he’d passed closest to, squawked, and Harry took up and off towards Malfoy with Grey and Cassel close on his tail.  
  
Malfoy turned his head inch by slow inch and looked at Harry with remote eyes.  
  
Harry winked and threw the Quaffle right at him.  
  
Malfoy watched it come with a much dimmer expression than Harry had assumed he would. Then he tilted his broom back, just a little, and the Quaffle passed him and began to fall. Now it was heading for Grey’s arms, and she sped up a little to catch it at the same moment as Harry felt a tug from his finger.  
  
Malfoy was trying to Summon the diamond ring he’d given Harry. Whether it was because he thought Harry was unworthy of wearing it or because he was trying to distract Harry and give his teammates the advantage, Harry didn’t know.  
  
What he  _did_ know was that he had no intention of letting it happen. He flipped over and dived, scattering Cassel and Jester behind him, and then aimed straight at Grey and rose like a dragon.  
  
 _Maybe I can claim later it was all for my dragon,_ he thought, slightly hysterical.  
  
Grey flinched, tried to avoid backing, but her instincts took over—along with the expression of mad determination on Harry’s face, maybe—and she dived out of the way. Harry still scraped along her broom as he passed her, both his hands wide open, palms curved.  
  
The Quaffle dropped into right hand, neatly as the Snitch ever had.  
  
And Harry spun his left hand over and cupped and caught the ring in the same motion, then continued the spin so that he was on the same level as Malfoy and facing him. He didn’t know if the other Falcons knew what he had in his left hand, or if any of them would even care. This was really a private contest between him and Malfoy.  
  
And Harry was going to win it, because the thought of Malfoy winning it was intolerable.  
  
Harry bowed to Malfoy and tossed the Quaffle over his shoulder, opened his hand to show the ring, and tossed it towards Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy dived, and then had to fumble, after all. He was an excellent Seeker, but the ring had fallen short of him instead of exactly where he thought it would.  
  
Harry went into the same backwards spin, head over broom bristles over heels, that he had sent Sparkman into. He could see the Quaffle falling and falling, sometimes near and sometimes far and sometimes upside-down, depending on the way that he was positioned at the moment.  
  
He knew what was going to happen. Knew it from the knowledge of the broom’s magic aching under his hands, and the knowledge of the winds on the pitch that he’d acquired as he spent time there this morning, and knew it from the weight and speed of the Quaffle when he’d caught it earlier.  
  
Down, and down, and over, and  _right_.  
  
Right in more than one sense, like the river of rightness running through him. He had known he would be in the correct place to catch the Quaffle, and he was. It smacked into his palm, and the weight was a relief. Harry came out of the spin and bowed his head, struggling both to catch his breath and not to show that he was. He didn’t want to prove anyone right if they decided he was weak.  
  
He turned his free hand over, and the diamond ring fell into it. Harry cocked his head back. His first thought was that Malfoy had repented of his little temper tantrum and decided that he didn’t want anyone knowing he and Harry weren’t really engaged.  
  
From the look of Malfoy’s eyes as he Summoned the Snitch, though, that wasn’t the case. He bounced the Snitch up and down in his palm, and whispered, “You might have proved yourself as a Beater and Chaser, but you haven’t done it yet as a Seeker. Do you want to?”  
  
“No,” said Harry.  
  
Malfoy blinked and actually bucked on his broom for a second, always a sign that a player had been badly startled. It meant he was losing connection with the magic that powered his broom. Harry held his gaze, smiled, and said, “I want you to acknowledge that I’m better without a contest. I just  _am_ better. I don’t need to prove myself.”  
  
He and Malfoy locked eyes for long enough that he almost thought Malfoy would listen to him. Then Malfoy sneered and spun, tossing the Snitch high.  
  
Harry began working his hands to get the diamond ring back on the right finger and ensure that Cassel or someone else caught the Quaffle. He didn’t move. He only tilted his head back and to the left, like a falcon eyeing a noon snack.  
  
Malfoy was going in the wrong direction.  
  
Harry smiled a little. Of course he was. And then he would come back in a long swoop and hit the Snitch where it hovered over the middle of the grass.  
  
 _Let’s see. I have to do something that’s impressive and also takes into account the fact that the Snitch might move when he comes nearer._  
  
Harry didn’t think Malfoy would have enchanted the Snitch to hover where it was, even if he’d technically cheated by Summoning it just now. He would want to win fairly.  
  
 _Which is just what he has no chance of doing,_ Harry thought with a sad shake of his head, and then pulled back a little and made sure he was perfectly balanced on his broom. He knew what he was doing. He would prove that to everyone who looked at him with sad eyes and thought he should have chosen to be a professional Quidditch player when he could, that it was too late now.  
  
And he would only use magic to cheat right at the beginning.  
  
He cast a spell that pulled the Quaffle out of a startled Grey’s hands, and then began his Wronski Feint. He could hear howls and yells behind him, but he didn’t have to listen to them. It was sort of easy to let the wind sweep the sound away, anyway.  
  
He was heading downwards. The Snitch was below him but moving faster away in a long curve, exactly as he had thought would happen. The Quaffle was hurtling towards the earth. Malfoy was diving from above his left shoulder.  
  
 _All going exactly to plan._  
  
Harry was thinking with his joints now, his legs, his skin. He put on another burst of speed, and the earth grew and grew the way a spell always seemed to get bigger as it came towards him. The Quaffle had fallen below him now, and Harry spun to the side, turning the diagonal dive into a corkscrew one.  
  
Someone shouted. Harry hoped it was one of the Chasers.  _Watch and learn._  
  
He came in under the Quaffle on one curve of his spiral and grabbed it out of the air, tucking it down and against the broom. His free hand, meanwhile, was cupped off to the side, sticking out, breaking the motion he would have needed to continue corkscrewing down and land in the grass safely that way. Malfoy was almost opposite him now, and glaring like a hen that someone had decided to take eggs from under.  
  
Harry couldn’t help winking. He didn’t know if Malfoy saw it, and he didn’t have time to care. The world was dancing in a wild way, earth and sky and brooms and players folding around each other as if Harry was falling into the center of a cloth. The wind pressed hard against his cheeks as he turned his head in the right direction and saw the Snitch.  
  
It was further from him than he’d thought, but another wild kick and struggle on the broom changed that, and then he was once again in a spiral—sort of—with the Snitch off to the side. He could snag it in the midst of another spiral.  
  
Malfoy accelerated past him. He was going to try to grab the Snitch, Harry knew. To prove he was the better Seeker, and probably prove other things, too. On he went, almost flat to his broom. It was a wonderful performance. Harry would have applauded if he didn’t have one hand full of Quaffle and the other full of rushing air.  
  
Oh, and if he wasn’t going to win.  
  
He flipped upside-down because he had to, because the wind was tearing at him and trying to sit upright now was suicide, and the broom spun around and around on like a spit over a fire, with Harry its unwitting passenger. Harry laughed. He could still feel the magic of the broom, dancing as wildly as the world did, and he was in tune with it, his own magic roaring up and down his body like a tormented snake.  
  
The Snitch was heading away from him. Towards Malfoy, but turning so as to avoid him, too. Harry looked straight ahead, and on top of one of his dizzy spins, flung the Quaffle as hard as he could.  
  
It bounced into the Snitch and deflected its path, downwards. Malfoy pulled up, snarling in a way that Harry was absolutely certain had happened even though he couldn’t hear it.   
  
Harry knew Malfoy had pulled up because he was too close to the ground. He knew that heading further down would mean he would probably crash. He knew all those things, with his bones and his skin as he knew the magic of the broom, and he dismissed them. What mattered most was the wind around him and the chance to win the game  _and look really great doing it._  
  
Harry swung back around on top of his broom and took off after the Snitch. It had recovered and was heading back up, but its wings were fluttering slowly. Harry supposed even Snitches could be shocked by the measures taken to capture them by a really  _determined_ Seeker.  
  
Harry dived one more time and grabbed the Snitch. His other shoulder slammed against the stands, and he rolled and bounced, spinning around his broom again so that he was carried away from them.   
  
He still landed hard, on grass that was soaking wet with dew. But, well, he’d known that it wasn’t going to be an easy landing. He bounced to his feet, grinning.  
  
Cassel landed beside him, staring at him. Harry bowed to her and checked himself over. He was covered with scuffs, there was a small cut on his cheek that had started bleeding, and his left side ached in a way that would mean bruises later. Oh, and he had a cramping pain in his thumb, in the hand that held the Snitch, that meant it was probably sprained.  
  
“Was that a game, or was that a game?” he asked smugly.  
  
Cassel didn’t have the chance to answer, because Malfoy had also landed and was striding towards him. Harry turned to face him, feeling as though someone had filled his veins with bubbles of happiness. Whether Malfoy took the ring again or yelled at him or congratulated him between gritted teeth, Harry knew he’d won.  
  
Malfoy came up to him, seized the front of his robes, and kissed him.  
  
It was such a hard kiss that Harry promptly tried to fight back. It qualified as assault under all the standards that he’d learned in the Aurors. It hurt and it burned, and Harry would have punched Malfoy if his head hadn’t been whirling.  
  
It was still whirling when Malfoy stepped back, said, “I’m going to have a man who takes such risks as my fiancé only because I refuse to let anyone  _else_ have him,” and threw the ring Harry hadn’t even noticed him taking this time. It landed on Harry’s finger.   
  
He turned and stalked off towards the showers. Harry stood there with his lips bleeding, too, and his eyes slowly blinking.  
  
Cassel moved a little, drawing Harry’s eyes. She grinned at him.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “Some game. And just a warning, Potter. Malfoy  _likes_ playing rough.”  
  
She winked at him, and walked away, too. Then the others came around to yell various phrases, and Harry tried to nod back to them and act gracious, instead of feeling at his lips and staring into nothingness.  
  
Malfoy had—won. Or they both had.  
  
Either way, Harry knew his victory hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to.  
  
Before ten minutes had passed, though, he was grinning again.  
  
No, it had turned out better.


	9. Why Malfoy Likes to Play Rough

“And so I don’t have anything to report yet,” Harry had to say. He tried to ignore the tight set of Kingsley’s jaw. After all, he had done his duty, and protested when Kingsley first sent him on this insane assignment. It wasn’t his fault if Kingsley was finally having to grasp the insanity and admit he’d been wrong. “The Bludgers bore no lingering trace of enchantment. No one has attacked him since that illusory assault on the gates.”  
  
“That’s still  _something_ to report.” Kingsley sounded like a cat who had just decided that the string trailing across the floor must be a mouse. Harry leaned against his chair and shook his head sadly.   
  
“I already reported it, though, sir,” he pointed out, and watched Kingsley visibly struggle not to move from cat to lion.  
  
“Very well. Then continue to stay as close to Malfoy as you can, and hope that something else will happen that can lead you to a good guess about what’s going on.” Kingsley abruptly glanced up with a wicked smile. “At least your undercover status seemed assured.”  
  
“What have they been saying?”  
  
Kingsley’s smile was worthy of Voldemort at this point.  
  
“ _What_ is it?”  
  
Voldemort watching Nagini devour someone, Harry thought, by the time Kingsley finally deigned to answer him. “Oh, nothing much. Only that Mr. Malfoy may finally have met his match with someone who likes to play as hard as he does.”  
  
Harry sighed. It figured that there would have been at least one photographer in place to record his “practice” match with the Falcons. Malfoy probably arranged to have cameras snapping his picture in his bedroom in case his fans missed one exciting moment of him brushing his teeth.  
  
“And who managed to play games with the Snitch and the ring and the Quaffle,” Kingsley went on, and his voice had a warning tone to it now. He had one eye on Harry, too. “And Mr. Malfoy’s heart.”  
  
Harry half-shrugged. “At this point, sir, what do you think would make the bigger scandal, our breaking up or some people suspecting that I’m not in love with Malfoy despite being his fiancé?”  
  
Kingsley took the hint, and nodded. “I only wanted to warn you to be careful, Harry. Push this too far, and the people who’re hunting Malfoy might not be the biggest threat you have to face. Some fans can be rather vengeful when stalking people they think had the chance to sleep with their obsession.”  
  
“I know,” Harry muttered. It was one reason that at least a few of his dates had been interrupted in the past, after all. “Well, sir, thank you for the warning. I’ll do what I can.”  
  
But he knew backing down from his competition with Malfoy, or breaking off the “relationship,” would be his absolute last choices. And not only because the mystery of what was going on had started to intrigue Harry, and he felt more than a little responsible for Malfoy after saving the bloke’s life.  
  
Breaking up with him, buckling under the pressure, backing away—any of those would say he couldn’t endure it. Any of those would let Malfoy win.  
  
Harry wouldn’t die to win, but he would do the equivalent of dangling upside-down from his broom by his knees with one hand on the Snitch and the other on his wand.  
  
 _And he ought to know I can do it by now, too._  
  
*  
  
“What’s that, mate?” Ron was leaning over his desk, probably caught by the shape and size of the Quidditch tickets in Harry’s hand more than their color, which was pure gold marked with veins of silver.  
  
Harry studied the tickets for a second, then nodded. “A bribe.”  
  
“For what?” Ron leaned back enough to study his face, probably trying to decide if Harry was serious.  
  
Harry sighed and looked at him. “You know I’m dating Malfoy now?”  
  
Ron grinned. “Good one.”   
  
Harry resisted the temptation to bury his head in his hands. Neither of his friends had questioned him about his dates with Malfoy, but for opposite reasons. Hermione, with one steady glance, had probably assessed it right away as an undercover assignment for the Aurors, and known he couldn’t talk about it. She wouldn’t push until matters were safely over and Harry  _could_ talk about it, or until he was in greater danger than seemed likely to happen right now.  
  
Ron, on the other hand, persisted in treating the whole thing as a joke, another rumor the papers had made up about Harry, like when they had said he was dating Celestina Warbeck a year ago. He had also decided that Harry, for his own reasons, was going along with the joke.  
  
Harry supposed he couldn’t complain. It kept Ron from exploding in anger, and that was all to the good. But it did make certain discussions difficult.  
  
“Anyway.” Harry held up the golden tickets and waved them around again. He had seen them before, although he’d always refused them himself. For some reason, people who wanted to bribe him had never taken the simple step of ensuring that they sent enough tickets for him  _and_ his friends. “These will let me get a good seat at the next Falcons game.”  
  
“I’ve never seen them with silver on them, though.”  
  
Harry smiled a little tightly. “No. That means I can only attend the game and have free meals and all the rest of it on one condition.” Malfoy’s elegant little note, which had arrived with the tickets, made that clear.   
  
“Well, what’s the condition?”  
  
Harry hesitated. But then he reminded himself that Ron thought it was a joke right now, and if he didn’t, he would still support his best friend. Maybe not with tact and diplomacy, but support was support.  
  
“Malfoy wants me to wear robes that are enchanted to go transparent when he, and only he, looks at me.”  
  
Ron opened his eyes wide enough that Harry saw all sorts of colors in them that he never had before. Then he fell off his chair and began howling in silent laughter on the floor, his arms clenched around his ribs.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, laugh,” he said. “It’s not like  _you’re_ the one who has to do it.”  
  
Oddly enough, that sliced Ron’s laughter off at the root. He clambered up on the chair again and stared at Harry. “You’re considering going through with it?”  
  
“Um,” Harry said. “Ron, I’m dating Malfoy. I told you that.” He was sure he had told Ron that. He couldn’t have imagined all the jokes that Ron had made as a result.  
  
“But this.” Ron gestured towards the tickets and shook his head. “That’s sort of—exploiting yourself, whoring yourself out, for the sake of the joke. I mean, I know that you really want to turn heads and get one up on Malfoy, but is it worth it?”  
  
Harry was asking himself the same thing. He was a little annoyed that Ron had managed to put it in better words than he had, though.   
  
“He says he’ll be the only one who can see through my robes.” Harry did a drumroll with his fingers on the edge of his desk. He was sure that he knew what spell Malfoy wanted him to use, too, and it wasn’t as if it was a Dark one.  
  
“Holy shit,” said Ron, sounding a little dazed. Harry glanced at him and saw him sitting there with his mouth open. “You’re considering doing it.  _Really doing it_.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and suddenly something swooped down and took hold of him. Hermione would say it was recklessness. She would scold him and tell him not to do this for the sake of seeing Ron’s face and Malfoy’s, and then she would give him a cup of tea with a Calming Draught in it and ask him seriously if he’d been to see a Mind-Healer.  
  
But Hermione wasn’t here.  
  
“I’m going to do it,” Harry said, and he turned and smiled at Ron in a way that made Ron recoil. Harry laughed. He could feel wine running through him and rising in him, he thought, not blood. “Why not? It’s not like anyone else will be able to see through my robes and snap pictures. He promised.”  
  
“There was a time you would have trusted Voldemort’s promise more than Malfoy’s,” Ron said, and shook his head. “And now you’re going to do  _this_. It’s more than a joke, isn’t it?”  
  
“For him,” Harry said, “I think it is.” He ruthlessly suppressed the surge of pity he wanted to feel. For one thing, Cassel had told him the truth, that Malfoy broke up with all sorts of people and only dated the ones he thought would complement him. He was just as likely to end their “engagement” before Harry did.  
  
For another, well, it was _Malfoy_ , and he had already toyed with Harry enough, which the tickets proved. He deserved some payback.  
  
“What’s the point, though? I mean, if he wants to gape at you naked and you indulge him in that, what does he lose?”  
  
Harry gave a smile that won a tentative smile from Ron this time, although he still looked uneasy.  
  
“Because he’s going to see how much he’ll never get to have,” Harry said, and struck a pose. “What he’ll never get to touch.” He leaned closer and murmured, “Ron, I am going to drive him  _crazy_.”  
  
Ron watched him in silence for a moment, his face locked in an expression Harry had never seen before. Then he swallowed a little and moved in, leaning down. Harry obediently leaned down with him. He was curious as to what Ron wanted to say next.  
  
“This is really important,” Ron whispered, and Harry nodded, anticipating some appeal that he not lose his heart to Malfoy, or some other promise that Harry would be able to give with a clear conscience.  
  
“Can you make the Falcons lose their next game, too?” Ron whispered. “That way, the Cannons have a chance of beating them.”  
  
*  
  
Harry strolled into the box in his most ornate dress robes, a little stuffy and impersonal. Well, Malfoy hadn’t specified that he had to wear  _pretty_ robes.  
  
It was amusing to watch the wizards who ran security on the game open their mouths to speak to him, catch sight of the tickets flashing in Harry’s hand, and immediately start bowing and apologizing. Auror John Clearwater, walking beside Harry, snorted a little.  
  
“You must be something special to Malfoy,” he said.  
  
“Yes, I must,” Harry agreed blandly. Kingsley had insisted on Harry taking Clearwater for extra security, but as far as Harry considered it, it was a waste of time when Clearwater didn’t know about his mission to stay close to Malfoy and Harry wasn’t allowed to tell him. Harry simply tilted his head back and studied the sky above him, though, looking for…  
  
There it was.  
  
Malfoy cutting through the sky was unmistakable. He didn’t look like a falcon, Harry thought, despite the name of his team and the way he tended to circle above the field and stare down at it. He looked like a dragon.  
  
Harry made plans to tell him that the instant he saw him next.  
  
The security wizards ushered Harry and Clearwater to their private box at once, and brought bottles of wine and Firewhisky and plates of sweets that Harry assumed were expensive. Clearwater exclaimed with delight and immediately started eating.  
  
Harry lifted his head and stared skywards, instead. He saw the moment that Malfoy turned his head towards the box, which just meant those tickets had contained more precise instructions about their seating than Harry had been able to read.  
  
Harry smiled. He knew his robes had flickered and gone transparent when Malfoy looked at him, because of the way he jerked on his broom. He also knew that the spell had worked as it should have and Clearwater hadn’t noticed anything, because he was guzzling Firewhisky next to Harry as if it was a rare treat.  
  
“They do have good drinks here,” Clearwater muttered, and then picked up something that looked expensive from the tray of food and bit into it. Some bright green liquid leaked out. Harry looked politely away. “Holy  _hell_.”  
  
Harry knew that Clearwater didn’t expect anything serious to happen here, and Harry was perfectly capable of defending himself if something did. Hell, maybe it would convince any enemies who were watching him and waiting for him to move on Draco’s case that Harry and Clearwater were both idiots and they could safely turn back to assaulting Draco.  
  
Besides. Harry had a game of his own to play here, and it didn’t have anything to do with Auror cases or Quidditch.  
  
He waited until Malfoy had circled back above their box and was watching for the first sight of the Snitch. Then he reached down and laid his hand casually on his thigh, above his cock. Clearwater was still too busy guzzling and slurping to notice, and their box was distant enough from other people that Harry wasn’t even worried about Omnioculars.  
  
Harry inched his hand down.  
  
Malfoy tilted his broom. Harry had the impression that they locked gazes across the distance for a minute, and Malfoy shifted a little forwards.  
  
 _Let that be a sign of discomfort,_ Harry thought, and ran one finger slowly down the crease of his robes above his groin.  
  
This time, Malfoy’s broom tilted too much, and he had to lower and then lift again to recover. It wasn’t much, not if you weren’t an expert on brooms. But Harry was, and he knew Malfoy’s connection with its magic had flickered.  
  
Just for a moment. Just like Harry’s robes. But a moment could be crucial.  
  
Harry kept looking at Malfoy and smiled sweetly. He had to wait again, because Malfoy apparently saw the Snitch on the other side of the pitch and took off after it, to hysterical shrieks from the crowd and the opposing Seeker from the Catapults.   
  
Harry sniffed. He’d never had much opinion of the Catapults’ Seeker, Thornie Wilder.  _Catapulted up to his position, indeed._  
  
But the next time that Malfoy flew overhead and Harry thought he was looking down enough for Harry’s robes to flicker, he reached up and rested his other hand on his chest. From Malfoy’s perspective, he would be barely touching one of his nipples.  
  
Again Malfoy’s broom tilted.  
  
Harry smiled, filled with a delirious, brain-pounding excitement, which he could only compare to the actual flying he’d done opposite the Falcons in that last practice game. His thumb slowly sneaked out and pressed down on his nipple, and he jolted a little with how it felt. Then he licked his lips and tilted his head further back, so that Malfoy could get a good glimpse of his collarbone and the hollow of his throat.  
  
 _Witch Weekly_ had once run a stupid article rating various parts of Harry’s body. His eyes had come in first, his smile second, and his collarbone and hollow of his throat third and fourth. Harry rolled his eyes almost frantically when someone showed the stupid thing to him.  
  
Now, he hoped it was true.  
  
 _I’m about to make your seat on your broom a bit uncomfortable, Malfoy_.  
  
He didn’t dare touch himself  _much_ harder than he was, but he knew that he didn’t have to. Harry just sat there and made those little motions like he was  _about_ to wank or _about_ to touch his nipple. When Clearwater glanced at him and asked a few questions, Harry was able to turn the motions of his hands into natural ones that reached for the drinks or the food easily enough.  
  
Some of the food was even good, and there were some small rolls of pastry fastened around bits of egg and meat that gave Harry another idea.  
  
He waited until Malfoy was passing close enough to the box, with slow deliberation, that the gesture wouldn’t be wasted. Then he slid a roll between his lips and closed his eyes, reveling in the taste, licking sharply as his teeth broke through the crust.  
  
“Fuck,” he whispered.  
  
Clearwater was glaring at him when he opened his eyes again. “I hardly think the game is going so badly that you need to resort to vulgar expletives,” he said.  
  
Harry concealed a snort. He’d never been on a case with Clearwater that resulted in him getting drunk, but he had heard, from others, that Clearwater got considerably more formal when he was pissed. “I’m just saying what I think,” he said, and then broke the rest of the roll with his teeth and licked his lips and fingers deliberately as he looked up at Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy, who was still hanging in the same place above the box and staring at Harry while, behind him, the Catapults’ Chasers were throwing the Quaffle through the hoop and Wilder was hurtling towards the ground with his hand outstretched.  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows and tilted his head a little. Malfoy snapped his head around and seemed to realize what was happening.  
  
Then he flew backwards.  
  
Harry found himself on his feet before he thought about it, shouting, along with half the crowd. Malfoy was  _merciless_  on himself, driving his broom through one of the hardest tests anyone could inflict on it. His mouth was set and his eyes trained dead ahead, and he wouldn’t turn to the side or up. He simply reversed and cut around the pitch, passing literally in front of the noses of people in other stands, and then he held out his open palm.  
  
The Snitch fluttered there, not having time to leap away before Malfoy closed his fingers on it.  
  
The shouts this time were utterly delirious. Malfoy bowed from the waist, and the commentator called the game for the Falcons. Harry swallowed some pastry and a bit of disappointment that he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to Ron and make Malfoy lose the game for the Falcons.  
  
That was what he was thinking, anyway, until Malfoy turned his head and looked at him.  
  
His eyes were afire, his face set in the hard way it had been when he kissed Harry the other day. Harry knew that, although he could only make out the lower part of Malfoy’s face all that well. And when he bowed again, it was directly at Harry’s box, and then he turned and flew towards the grass.  
  
Harry shook his head, feeling as if he’d awakened from a daze. He turned to Clearwater, wondering if he’d noticed anything, but his head was buried in the Firewhisky again.  
  
“Good game,” Clearwater muttered.  
  
Harry nodded, and wondered what he was supposed to do next. They could probably leave the box at any time and be shown out through some private special route, but he thought that was a bit anticlimactic after what he’d shown Malfoy and Malfoy had shown him.  
  
 _Even with no actual climax involved._  
  
Then he turned sharply, because one of the security wizards who’d escorted them into the box was entering. He held something out to Harry, gift-wrapped with an elaborate gauzy bow of white lace.  
  
“Seeker Malfoy said this was for you,” the man muttered, his eyes focused over Harry’s head on the far side of the stands.  
  
Harry undid the bow, and found it was the Snitch. Its wings still fluttered in what seemed to be a daze, and it didn’t make any attempt to get away from him.  
  
When he reached out and picked up the bow again, it flickered, probably with some spell similar to the one that made Harry’s robes transparent, and Harry could read a note meant only for his eyes.  
  
 _Dinner. Tonight. We have things to talk about. And you have some motions of your hand to complete._


	10. How To Irritate Draco Malfoy

Harry sighed and leaned over to tap his glass against Ron’s. “Tough luck on the Falcons’ win, mate. But I think that I at least flustered Malfoy.”  
  
Ron gave a small groan and dropped his head on the table in front of him. “That’s not  _enough_ ,” he protested bitterly. “I know you tried, but it’s not  _enough_.” He stuck his lip out in front of him so far Harry thought Malfoy might have been able to land his broom on it. “I’ve always had this dream of seeing the Cannons winning everything, you know?”  
  
 _That it’s about the Cannons is how you can tell that it’s a dream._ But Harry didn’t say that, because it would have been mean in a way Ron didn’t deserve. He leaned forwards to pat his back and murmur commiseration, instead. Ron accepted it at least enough to down the glass in front of him with one gulp.  
  
Then he called for more Firewhisky. Harry leaned back with his eyes half-lidded and his hands tingling. He wanted to drink enough to show willing and to show sympathy for Ron’s team’s loss, but he needed to keep his head clear.  
  
He had to decide whether he  _would_ answer the summons Malfoy had been so gracious as to gift him with.  
  
On the one hand, of course he had to. It was essential to keeping up his cover. Kingsley would certainly think so, at least, and Harry really didn’t want to deal with Kingsley’s disappointment on top of everything else.  
  
But on the other, Harry thought he knew himself and Malfoy better than Kingsley did. He was running up against the outermost limits of what he was willing to do as part of his job, and Malfoy…  
  
He might be intrigued right now. When it came to  _sex,_ though, he would probably be able to tell the difference between coyness and outright disinterest.  
  
And Harry still couldn’t muster up much interest in the thought of actually touching Malfoy’s cock. Teasing him was fun and hilarious. Having sex with him under dubious pretenses wouldn’t be.  
  
An owl flew through the Leaky Cauldron’s front door and straight at Harry. Harry caught it easily on one shoulder. At least the Auror robes had a little extra padding worked in there, precisely to keep back the grip of great talons.  
  
The owl bowed its head and did a complex bit of work with its legs. In a few seconds, it held a letter out. Harry took it and opened it gingerly. He had thought it a work summons at first, but now…  
  
Sure enough, it was from Malfoy.  
  
 _Potter, if you don’t come to me tonight I won’t be responsible for my actions._  
  
That was all the letter said, but Harry winced as he imagined what it might  _mean_. He climbed to his feet with a martyred sigh and a shake of his head at Ron, who was sitting up in concern. “It’s Malfoy. His Majesty commands me to his side at once. I would tell you not to wait up, but it’s not like  _you’re_ the one who’s breathlessly waiting for a report about him.”  
  
“Um, no,” Ron said. His face was a bit pale. “Please feel free to keep all details of how you plan to deal with him away from me, mate. I mean, as many as you like. There are virtues to silence. I believe Hermione when she says that, now.”  
  
Harry grinned and shook his head. Sometimes having Ron believe that his whole “dating” of Malfoy was a brilliant joke helped. Now that Harry thought about it, he didn’t know what he had been nervous about. He had teased Malfoy before. He could do the same thing again. He had come up with excuses to string Malfoy along so far. Why couldn’t he do it again?  
  
“I’ll keep exactly as silent as I need to be,” Harry promised, and swept away, ignoring the way Ron’s plaintive, “What does  _that_ mean?” followed him.  
  
*  
  
Harry spent a moment fussing with his robes as he paused in front of the Manor’s doors. He was sure someone was watching him, maybe Malfoy himself, maybe Doory or the elf that probably existed named Looky. And he had to look as if he was really committed to making this sex, or dinner, or whatever, a success.  
  
Until he put his  _other_ plan in motion, at least.  
  
The door swung open before Harry’s fist could connect with it, and Harry raised an eyebrow. There was no elf there, and no Malfoy, either. The light in the front hall had been reduced to a few faint flickers from torch sconces. Malfoy’s voice echoed from the far end.   
  
“Come along, Harry. I think you deserve some consideration for the consideration you showed me at the game this morning.”  
  
For the briefest moment, Harry wondered if this could be a trap. Then he dismissed the notion. Of  _course_ it was a trap. It was meant to be one for his heart, and the only thing he had to do was not fall into it, the same way he would have avoided that if it was a trap for his body, the kind most other enemies would have set.  
  
Harry strutted into the room, not bothering to take his cloak off. It would provide another layer of protection if Malfoy decided to be literal about some things.  
  
The dining table turned out to be a softly glowing island of candlelight in the middle of the enormous room. Malfoy had enchanted the light so that it had a dusky rose tinge, and placed chairs of red velvet under it, very effective. The empty silver plates sparkled in front of the candles like a fantasy dream of a dinner.  
  
Malfoy, who’d been sitting in a chair at the head of the table like a throne, stood up and moved around it as Harry came nearer.  
  
He was naked.  
  
Harry froze. He couldn’t help it, even though he knew it meant a rather visible loss to Malfoy in their little game. His eyes traced the silver scars that lingered along Malfoy’s chest, the way his hips curved in a way that seemed to urge Harry’s gaze towards his groin, and the pallor of his skin. The candles made  _that_ shimmer, too, the same way they touched the plates.  
  
And, all right, there was his cock.  
  
Harry supposed it was all right, as cocks went. It wasn’t like he’d ever really had more than his own for comparison. It was flushed, and straight, and hard. And it was probably as pale as the rest of him when it wasn’t flushed like that.  
  
Harry’s eyes darted up to Malfoy’s. Malfoy was giving him a soft, contented smile that might have convinced Harry they were real lovers if he was like everyone else—inclined to fawn at Malfoy’s feet.  
  
As it was, Harry knew the smile for the taunt Malfoy meant it to be. Harry had faltered a step. Malfoy had upped the game, and was challenging Harry to meet him on a ground that was actually harder to make a good impression on than the Quidditch match had been.  
  
Harry’s thoughts seemed to move slower than Malfoy’s feet. Malfoy came up to him while Harry was thinking all that, and took one of his hands, and turned it slowly back and forth. Harry, looking down, had never been so conscious of the length of his own fingers before, and the unpolished, somewhat ragged state of his nails.  
  
“I told you,” Malfoy whispered to him, breath lingering on his earlobe, “that you had a few motions of your hand to complete.”  
  
And then he  _actually tried to lower Harry’s hand to his groin._  
  
Without even a  _kiss_ first!  
  
Harry lost his head. He could have put his other plan into motion right about then, but it would have looked like he was backing away from Malfoy because he was scared. And since the first time Draco Malfoy had asked him if he was scared, in second year, Harry had made it a policy never to back away from the narrow-cheeked git.  
  
He leaned forwards and kissed Malfoy, hard enough that Malfoy cried out against his lips and, this was the important part, loosed his grip on Harry’s hand. Harry promptly made that a conventionally romantic gesture by reaching up and cupping Malfoy’s face tenderly between his hands, smoothing his thumbs up and down the bastard’s cheeks.  
  
This close, he could feel the silken stubble of a beard, and see a small scar curving around the edge of Malfoy’s left eye. And feel the impact of those eyes, wide and startled, on his own.  
  
Harry shut his own, when he had cemented with a long, earnest gaze that he  _wasn’t_ scared of Malfoy, and settled into the kiss.  
  
Harry knew how to kiss. At least, he’d never had any complaints, and as long as the person—the woman—he kissed didn’t intend to run to the  _Daily Prophet_ afterwards with the juicy details, most people involved didn’t seem to be taking notes. They were all caught up in the experience and rushing forwards much as Harry did.  
  
Now he was trying to kiss while keeping conscious of what he was doing, and it was more difficult. And Malfoy was twisting like a snake in his arms, as if he would complain if he could get his mouth free.  
  
But Harry wasn’t going to allow him to do that. He bore Malfoy back and back, until he was against a wall, and he pinned him there and went to work on his mouth. His tongue darted and teased, back and forth, until he coaxed Malfoy’s tongue into following. Then he held still and let Malfoy probe at him and push at him until he gave in and let Malfoy have what he wanted.  
  
The taste and the heat were pretty much the same as a woman’s mouth, Harry noted.  
  
There was a dim redness expanding behind his eyelids when Harry broke away. He opened his eyes for the first time in a long while, and watched Malfoy’s chest rise and fall. It was easier to look at his face this time, to ignore his cock. Harry smiled. Malfoy looked well-kissed.  
  
At least, he did until he turned his head and studied Harry, and then his gaze looked piercing in the way that meant he was going to try to take advantage of someone. Harry raised his eyebrows.  
  
“You’re hard,” Malfoy whispered.  
  
It was as though reality was on a gigantic slingshot, and it had bent back and Harry had mostly been concerned with watching Malfoy’s reaction to the stone  _he’d_ launched. Suddenly he was aware of his own straining muscles, his burning need, and the way that heat was rushing up his ears and down his throat like a lemming off a cliff.  
  
And Malfoy was the weasel who was about to  _eat_ the lemming.  
  
Harry didn’t think he could get out of this by pleading—well, something or other. He would probably look still weaker if he retreated or went with his other plan. So he simply raised his head and his eyebrows and said nothing at all. Hey, sometimes it worked to drive off fans who thought he was “nice” and then didn’t know how to get around his sudden haughtiness.  
  
It didn’t fend off Malfoy. He approached Harry with pattering footsteps and stood there, surveying Harry as if Harry was naked, too. Harry appreciated the cloak around his shoulders even more, although it didn’t, admittedly, do much about hiding his hard-on.  
  
“You’re ready?” Malfoy whispered. When Harry stood there and didn’t move and didn’t say anything, Malfoy elaborated. “To complete the motions of your hand?”  
  
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” Harry said evenly to him. “I’ve never dated a man. I did what you wanted me to do today, and something extra. I don’t feel like anything more.”  
  
Dignity might work where simple silence didn’t. But it didn’t, either. Malfoy reached out and took Harry’s hand and guided it down towards his groin, holding Harry’s gaze all the time. It made it worse that his challenging smile wasn’t really out in the open. It hovered around Malfoy’s lips, instead, and Harry would have to be a fool not to know what it really looked like.  
  
Harry braced himself, and didn’t run. In the end, the only thing he might be able to control in this situation was his reactions. And he wasn’t going to appear childish or fearful.  
  
Not that he really was, not now. If anything, he was resigned to it, and wondered how soon he could get away with casting a Cleaning Charm on his hand.  
  
Then Malfoy guided his palm further down, alongside and in, and  _wrapped_  Harry’s fingers around his cock, and Harry found himself not neutral at all. Again reality hit him in the gut and broke through his mask, and he was panting suddenly, gasping as though he’d been running a race, while Malfoy rubbed his hand back and forth.  
  
 _Wanking with my hand._  
  
The notion should have been disgusting, and wasn’t at all. Harry found his eyes straying away from Malfoy’s face soon enough, and focusing on the way that Malfoy’s cock, smooth and straining, disappeared between his fingers and reappeared again.  
  
“Like— _that_.” Malfoy was straining back, his face like a weasel’s in ecstasy. He leaned on the wall as if it was the only thing holding him up.  
  
Harry grinned. Another idea for how he might take advantage of the situation had just come to him.  
  
He rubbed harder, faster. It wasn’t that much different from wanking himself, when it came right down to it. He had thought it would be more disgusting than it had turned out to be. It was a little wet, but not much. Harry hooked his hand behind the nape of Malfoy’s neck and pulled him close, clapping their mouths together for a moment.  
  
He pulled and stroked, meanwhile. Malfoy was almost sliding against him by now, his eyes half-lidded and fixed on Harry’s face. Harry worked his expression into one of concentration and kept on pulling.  
  
He waited until the last moment, or what should be the last one. Somehow, Malfoy kept holding it off. His eyes were completely shut now and he was grunting with his mouth open, providing Harry with a deeper view of his throat than Harry had ever wanted. But he hadn’t yet surrendered to the moment when he would come.  
  
Harry concentrated harder than ever. This was going to take an effort of his will. And  _not_ on Malfoy’s cock, thank you very much.  
  
 _There_  it was—it had to be. Malfoy’s hips were rising from the wall as though someone under an Invisibility Cloak was pulling on them, and his mouth had opened in what looked like a yawn, and his hands were fists at his side.  
  
Harry took his hand from Malfoy’s neck and worked it down to his wand. The spell was already pulsing in his mind, ready to go, and it took nothing more than half the normal wand movement to make it come true. A shrill beeping sound rang out from the direction of Harry’s wrist.  
  
Malfoy leaped like a starfish someone had tweaked by one of its arms. He certainly  _looked_ like a starfish, spraddled all over the wall at the moment and gaping at Harry as if he had never heard the sound of an alarm before in his life.  
  
“Shit,” Harry breathed, staring down at what was really only the old watch Mrs. Weasley had given him, but it was half-hidden from Malfoy’s sight and  _he_  didn’t know that. “Shit.  _Shit_.” He backed off, shaking his head. “Malfoy, I’m sorry—you don’t know how sorry I am—but that’s the Minister calling me in. He never does that unless it’s an emergency. And probably one that has to stay secret. I’m  _so_ sorry.”   
  
He looked at Malfoy, who had one hand in front of his groin as if to catch his come. But his voice was a low growl, and his face was turning as red as his cock had been. “You’re leaving  _now_?”  
  
“What?” Harry blinked once. “But the Minister needs me!”  
  
“I was just about to—” And Malfoy made a gesture that Harry thought the papers would probably pay good money to have a photograph of. It was also probably one that half Malfoy’s fans thought he was too refined to use and the other half dreamed about having done to them.  
  
“You were? Right  _then_?” Harry widened his eyes and slapped his hand over his face. “I’m  _so_ sorry! I’ve never been with a man before, you see! I wasn’t sure!”  
  
Malfoy stared at him with an expressionless face. Harry thought he could see the beginnings of rage there, though. And probably hatred.  
  
 _Well, if he keeps me close for pride’s sake, then that’s nothing I can’t handle. And if he doesn’t, then I’ll find out some way to handle that, too. But Kingsley can’t actually expect me to have sex with him. Playing a game is one thing. That would be something different._ Harry didn’t know of any instance where an Auror had been expected to have sex with someone else on a mission, although they were sometimes required to act seductive.  
  
And so far, nothing about this case suggested that it was unsolvable if he wasn’t at Malfoy’s side. It would just make it more convenient if he was.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to apologize again, and then Malfoy grabbed his watch and flung it away from Harry. Harry cried out as he saw it fly across the dining room, and he whipped out his wand to cast the spell that would save it from smashing against the wall.  
  
That never happened. A house-elf—whose name was probably Watchy—appeared and seized it, cradling it carefully between his big hands, then vanished.  
  
Harry was reflecting on the fact that Malfoy either had a bit of an exhibitionism kink, too, or else didn’t consider hose-elves in the category of people, when Malfoy grabbed the back of his neck and looked into his eyes.  
  
“The Minister can wait two or three minutes without much loss,” Malfoy breathed. “And there’s one thing you should know, Potter. I  _don’t lose_.”  
  
He leaned his cock against Harry’s hip at the same moment as he pulled Harry into a kiss and reached down to align himself against Harry’s groin. And then they were _both_ rubbing together at the same time, and Harry found himself catapulted from thinking about what was going to splatter all over him to trying desperately not to come.  
  
He rocked, he moaned because he had to and because Malfoy’s tongue was in his mouth, and all the time his mind worked frantically.  
  
Because  _he_ didn’t lose, either. He was going to find some way to turn this to his advantage.  
  
If only he could  _think_ , and this heavy red haze would  _get out of his head._


	11. How to Up the Game

Harry stumbled, pulling Malfoy with him. But Malfoy’s eyes stayed bright and focused, and his hands were so firm on Harry’s hips, and there was another hand on Harry’s cock again the instant he paused.  
  
 _I could just fall over._  
  
 _Or I could stop._  
  
But both options would probably reveal that something was up to Malfoy, and Harry didn’t want to do that unless he absolutely had to. The options tumbled through his head, and he gasped, disturbed and confused. He closed his eyes and tried to orient his thoughts, and had no more luck than ever as Malfoy’s hand gave him a little frisson of friction.  
  
Then he felt something spark through his bones and over his head. And apparently the Aurors had drilled some instincts into him even further than sex had, because he pushed Malfoy to the floor and dived on top of him, yelping, as something seemed to go off like a firework at the level of the tabletop.  
  
Malfoy groaned, and his voice was human for the first time since he’d started begging for sex. “Potter,” he whispered. “I don’t care if you charge off and save a dozen lives in the next minute.  _Please_.” He rolled so as to bring their groins back together.  
  
Harry sprang to his feet and cast the spell he should have just cast in the first place, once he realized he was letting his erection control his thoughts. It made said erection subside violently, whether or not it wanted to. He smiled brightly at Malfoy, said, “Sorry!” and took off, pelting towards the window of the dining room.  
  
The attack had come from there. He was sure it had. And there must be at least one broken defensive spell to let it get through, although he might not have noticed it this time because he wasn’t as connected to the Manor as Malfoy was.  
  
Not to mention the…other reasons they might not have noticed.  
  
Malfoy gave a lonely cry behind him. Harry didn’t mind admitting that that cry tore at his heart. If he was anything of what he pretended to be, then he would turn around and give Malfoy the relief he was craving.  
  
But getting too involved in the game had only got him in a compromising position. He had come too close to doing what he said he would never do, sleeping with Malfoy under false pretenses. No. He wouldn’t go back.  
  
The thoughts flashed through his mind in much the same way as another attack flashed overhead. At least this one was at eye-height, and Harry was sure Malfoy was still lying on the floor. He ducked, looked briefly over his shoulder to make sure that the spell hadn’t caught tapestries on fire or anything like that, and then leaped through the window and landed on the small patch of grass right outside it.  
  
 _Broken defensive enchantments, yes._ For one thing, there was no other reason for the attackers to be back here instead of by the gates.  
  
And there were a  _number_ of attackers. They began to scatter when they saw him, but Harry counted at least six of those heavy cloaks that so many Dark wizards seemed to like wearing to proclaim, “Hello, I am evil.”  
  
He whipped around and aimed his wand back at the window. “ _Defendere!_ ”  
  
The window seemed to waver for a second like a picture disappearing underwater, and then it solidified. Harry nodded in satisfaction. The whole side of the house, including all the dining room windows, was now under a double-duty protective enchantment.   
  
And it was one that would repel spells from either side. Harry was proud of himself, proud of his Auror training, and not exactly watching out over his shoulder right then, which, he maintained later, was the  _only_ reason that they managed to sneak past his defenses at all.  
  
“Ha!”  
  
The spell caught him and spun him around. Harry shrieked—always a good thing to make your enemies think you were more wounded than you were, and that thing had bloody  _hurt_ —and rolled on the ground. Then he lay still and tried to assess the real damage, while his enemies tried to make up their minds to approach. Or not.  
  
The spell had clipped him near the spine, he decided. It felt like there was a small cut in his robes through which the blood steadily flowed. Not a huge cut in either cloth or skin, though. He was going to live.  
  
“Is he down?”  
  
They were creeping towards him. Harry listened to their footsteps and counted them in his head, along with heartbeats and moments when he thought the wizards might have paused, too scared to move at the idea of having killed one of the best Aurors in the Ministry.  
  
 _But you haven’t killed him,_ Harry thought, sang, and his hand closed on his wand hard enough that his fingers ached. It was lying beneath and beside him. He could do that.  
  
Finally, someone poked his buttocks with a wand. Maybe they wanted to cast another spell. Maybe they only wanted to see if he was dead.   
  
Harry didn’t give a damn what they wanted, and he didn’t intend to wait long enough to find out. He whirled and kicked that wizard—well, it turned out to be a witch—in the face instead. She staggered back, shrieking, and the hood dropped back from her shoulders as she clasped her bleeding nose.  
  
 _Pansy Parkinson?_  
  
Harry’s stare didn’t last long, because the others were closing in from the sides, shouting warnings and threats, and Harry was on his feet and cutting through them, and he could recognize other people as their hoods tumbled back. Some were unfamiliar—a wizard with hair that looked artificially grey, a brown-eyed woman with a distinctive birthmark on her face, a white-faced and white-haired witch with a single raven lock near her cheek.  
  
Others, he knew. Either from Hogwarts or from Quidditch news stories in the past few years.  
  
 _There’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand,_ Harry thought, as he ducked a curse and used a Shield Charm to fend off another one.  _But what I do understand…_  
  
Well. It made some sense of the attacks on Malfoy.  
  
People began popping out as they realized that Harry had recognized them, using the holes they must have already made in the Manor’s defensive perimeter. Harry began striking to disable as hard as he could, knocking out knees and hips and other vulnerable joints, and making people fall over. Then he cast a sweeping Stunner that took out several wizards at once.  
  
In the end, perhaps half the group still escaped. But Harry was left, wounded but master of the field, and master of some new intelligence, too.  
  
He used ropes to tie up the wounded and sleeping wizards and witches like a bouquet of flowers. Then he stormed towards the Manor.  
  
Malfoy had had enough being protected. Now he could do some  _explaining_.  
  
*  
  
By the time Harry walked into the dining room with the bouquet of people floating behind him, Malfoy had dressed again. Harry had a few fleeting thoughts about that, one of regret and one of relief that at least the prisoners he’d captured wouldn’t see Malfoy naked.  
  
Then he shook his head irritably, and spoke the natural counter to that thought aloud. “Why would you  _care_ if they saw you naked? Most of them already did, right?”  
  
Malfoy paused. His eyes narrowed into slits. Harry looked back at him, unimpressed.  
  
In some way, all the Malfoys he’d seen since Harry saved his life in the Falcons-Cannons game were the real ones. He thought Malfoy probably  _did_ expect people to just fall into line when he ordered them to date him. He thought Malfoy probably  _did_ want him, and was willing to put in some extra effort when Harry didn’t fall in line.  
  
But this Malfoy, indignant and wary over being found out, seemed like the most real of them all.  
  
“How enterprising of you,” Malfoy whispered at last, his voice dripping like a pan of spilled oil, “to have recognized some of my former lovers among the attackers.”  
  
Harry snorted inelegantly and gestured the bouquet forwards. He hadn’t managed to capture Parkinson before she Apparated, but there were at least two Quidditch players—from different teams—whose names had been linked with Malfoy’s in gossip in the past year. The only one Harry knew about for sure who was missing was Jessica Cassel.  
  
“They’re  _all_ your former lovers, I think,” Harry said flatly. “And that explains why they could get through the protections so easily, too. Exceptions that you built in for them and never took back out.” He paused. “Deliberately?”  
  
Malfoy’s breathing quickened a little. His eyelids flickered.  
  
“Yeah,” Harry drawled. He shook his head. “I know you have your reasons for distrusting the Ministry, Malfoy, but we honestly are  _trying_ to save your life. This doesn’t make it any easier.” He twitched the bouquet, and some people banged against each other and moaned. Harry set them on the floor instead, watching Malfoy all the while. “Is there anything you can say to excuse this?”  
  
“I can ask,” Malfoy said, straightening his shoulders, “why you referred to yourself as part of the Ministry just now instead of my fiancé, who’s watching out for me as part of your natural duties because you  _love_ me.”  
  
 _So my cover is blown._ On the other hand, considering what he now knew about Malfoy’s attackers, Harry didn’t think that was a bad thing. He nodded. “All right. I didn’t want to do this at first, because your taking me to the party and proposing to me came by complete surprise, but you remember how I returned your ring to you?”  
  
“Which of the several times?”  
  
“The first one.” Harry held on to his control with both hands. If this was the end of his game with Malfoy, well, it was a disappointing one. But Malfoy had still played a part in endangering his own life, through sheer carelessness if nothing else. “When I told you that I couldn’t be your fiancé?”  
  
“You came back because…the Ministry told you to?”  
  
Harry paused. Malfoy looked so lost that it almost made Harry feel sorry for him. But then Harry thought about the way Malfoy had fallen from his broom, and the way that he could have  _died_ from the spell that had come through the window today, and he lost the majority of his sympathy.   
  
“Yes,” he said. “Kingsley decided that the chance to have me near you and working undercover, not suspected by your attackers, was too good to pass up.”  
  
“If I’d wanted Ministry help, I’d have  _asked_ for it.” Malfoy’s eyes were gleaming like the eyes of a painted demon Harry had once seen.  
  
“Probably too late, and been a pretty corpse.” Harry raised his eyebrows. “You could have done something on your own, you know? Strengthened your protections, or told me the truth, or told someone from the Ministry the truth?”  
  
“I want people to want me.”  
  
Harry thought for a second Malfoy was still talking about the trick Harry had played on him, and started to reply that way, but then he stopped. Listened. Actually thought about what Malfoy was likely to be objecting to.  
  
“Wait,” he said slowly. “Are you saying…that you  _knew_ this was your former lovers, and you didn’t do anything about them because you wanted them to harass you as proof of their devotion?”  
  
Malfoy slowly tilted his head. Harry wondered why, then decided that someone had probably told him once it was cute. That seemed to be the reason for a lot of Malfoy’s actions.  
  
“I wanted them to want me,” Malfoy repeated. “I didn’t want to die. But if I did, then I would have chosen the means and manner of my death, and that’s more important to me than merely living on.”  
  
Harry sat down hard. Luckily, one of the dining room chairs was behind him, and Malfoy hadn’t enspelled it to move out of the way. “You’re so confusing,” he whispered, and massaged his forehead.  
  
“I’m myself.” Malfoy moved towards him, but Harry only looked up when he was close enough that it seemed as if he wasn’t going to stop walking. Malfoy did stop then, but he was regarding Harry with a faint sneer. “I thought you understood that. If you didn’t, then you should never have let yourself be seduced by me.”  
  
“It came a lot closer than I thought it would, that’s for sure.” Harry saw no reason not to tell the truth, now that they were doing so.  
  
Malfoy shook his head and planted his hands on the arms of the chair Harry sat in. Harry regarded him calmly back. He’d taken the former lovers down without serious injury because there were so many of them they got in each other’s way, and none of them was as skilled as a trained Auror.  
  
Malfoy probably knew deadlier spells, and he was close enough to be a problem, but Harry would still take him down. Because Malfoy was a lying prick, and Harry was angry enough to overcome any difference in their skill right now.   
  
“You have no reason to be angry at me,” Malfoy whispered, although his eyes were hot in a way that said he plainly thought he had the right to be angry at  _Harry_. “We both deceived each other.”  
  
“I’m not angry because of  _that_ ,” Harry snapped. “Not the lie itself. The  _consequences,_ you idiot. You could have died, and you stand here all smug and preening because it proved people  _wanted_ you? Wanted you dead! Or maybe not dating someone else,” he added. The massed attacks had only happened after the announcement of Harry as Malfoy’s fiancé, after all.  
  
Malfoy stared at him. “But that was what I wanted,” he said. “To see that they still had devotion to me.”  
  
Harry shook his head and reached out to plant a hand directly in the middle of Malfoy’s chest. Malfoy’s eyes promptly fluttered closed, and he seemed to stop breathing. Harry snorted. Malfoy had a real problem letting his lovers go, it seemed, but he could also be paralyzed by the mere  _suggestion_ of sex.   
  
Harry shoved him back. Malfoy reeled and didn’t fall, but he swung to the side, maintaining his balance only with his hard hold on the arm of Harry’s chair.  
  
Harry sighed and stood up. “Then it’s no harm, no foul,” he said. “You weren’t actually harmed. I didn’t actually have sex with you. I’ll take these people in and report the ones I saw. By looking through old newspaper articles, I should manage to identify the ones I couldn’t be sure of.”  
  
Malfoy bared his teeth. “I’ll decline to press charges.”  
  
“Oh, that’s okay,” Harry said calmly. “They attacked  _me_. And they can spend at least a few months in the holding cells for attacks on an Auror.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him. Harry stared back. He wondered if this was the cue for him to flounce dramatically out of Malfoy’s house and never see him again, or if Malfoy was going to do something even more dramatic than that, which would give Harry his cue.  
  
“You were never really attracted to me, were you?” Malfoy whispered. He sounded lost.  
  
Harry shook his head. “More attracted than I expected to be, especially right at first. But I did try to tell you, Malfoy.” He kept his voice as soft as he could. “I’m not gay. Not even bisexual. It was always going to be hard for me to stay as your fiancé and lover.”  
  
“You only pretended to be those things at all because of your duty to the Ministry.”  
  
“ _Largely_.” Harry tilted his head to the side and sawed his hand back and forth. “Like I said, I got more attracted than I expected to be.”  
  
“You couldn’t back off until you solved the case.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Also true. But also, I was enjoying the game. That’s why I accepted your invitation to the game today and also cast the spell that made my robes transparent.”  
  
“You enjoyed teasing me.”  
  
Harry was starting to wonder when the interrogation would end. Malfoy’s voice was flat all the way through, and had the same monotone, with an utter lack of wonder in it, although Harry would have found some of the revelations pretty interesting himself.  
  
He nodded again. “I did. I came here tonight intending to tease some more. I wouldn’t have let it go so far as actually having sex with you, though.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
With Malfoy sounding that way, there was no way to tell if he was actually interested in the answer or not. Harry held his eyes and gave it to him anyway. “Because I think having sex with someone is different from teasing or flirting with them. Who knows, though? If the conspiracy hadn’t attacked when it did, then I might have gone through with it. You  _are_ awfully hard to resist.”  
  
Even that revelation didn’t seem to please Malfoy or cheer him up. He wandered over and sat down on another chair near the table, bowing his head until his forehead rested in his hands. He sighed. The sigh was long and gloomy and desolate. Harry shook his head a little.  
  
“Please go,” Malfoy said.  
  
Harry nodded, stood up, and floated the crowed of Stunned people into the air again. “Someone may be by later to ask you about the names of other former lovers who were part of that crowd.”  
  
Malfoy waved a hand. Harry opened his mouth to ask what he could do, but then closed it, because it was clear what the answer would have been, and he  _couldn’t_ adore Malfoy to the obsessive point of wanting to destroy anyone else who started dating him.  
  
Or let him die himself at the end of a spell from someone who’d dated him.  
  
Harry shook his head, and took his leave. Malfoy went on looking at his hands and didn’t turn to him when Harry left.  
  
 _It couldn’t have worked out anyway,_ Harry tried to reassure himself as he stood on the stoop.  _Not when he was that mental and I’m not gay._  
  
But he still felt a little whiplash of regret for what could have been as he began Side-Along Apparating people.


	12. How to Cope With Madness

“That’s unbelievable,” Kingsley whispered, when Harry had finished the story about how he had discovered the conspiracy of Malfoy’s former lovers. (Suitably edited, of course. Harry didn’t think any Auror report needed to include the sentence, “And then I nearly came in my pants,” no matter how dedicated he was to the job).   
  
“Yes, sir.” Harry slumped back in his chair and let his gaze wander for a moment around Kingsley’s office. There were framed photographs and clippings from dozens of cases, not all of them successful. Harry felt, though, as if most of them had to be more  _normal_ than the one he had just worked. “He seems to have known about them and let them run.” He shrugged and turned to Kingsley. “He would have been content to die as long as he died admired, he said.”  
  
Kingsley frowned at him. “Well, some things still don’t make sense. Why did the lovers work together?”  
  
Harry groaned and tilted his head back against the chair. “Do I have to tell you  _now_?”  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Which meant yes, he did. Harry sighed and brought his head forwards. “I spoke to all of them separately—the ones who would speak instead of glaring at me—and they all said the same thing. They received owls that directed them to meet in one specific place and work together with the people they would find there. They also received plans for their attacks by owl from someone else. The letters promised that the one who succeeded in driving me away from Malfoy’s side or harming Malfoy in a way that didn’t kill him would get to have him.”  
  
“You think Malfoy sent them, don’t you?” Kingsley’s voice was sharp with wonder.  
  
“I don’t really see who else could have. No one else could have kept that promise about them having Malfoy.” Harry decided he might as well get some of his own back with deep sighs and indications of how much this was depressing him, so he turned and gestured at Kingsley. Kingsley prudently ducked so as not to get hit by a flying finger.   
  
“He didn’t care if he died! He was angry I saved his life!” Harry kept shooting out his fingers as he got to the relative points, and it made up, a little, for the curses he wouldn’t get to shoot at Malfoy for being so stupid. “He left weaknesses in the Manor’s perimeter  _on purpose_ , and they were all from the points when those people had been his lovers!” Harry slumped further back and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know whether the ultimate point was to be adored, or to have someone prove they were the strongest and thus must worthy of him, or to have me show off by protecting him. But it’s done now.”  
  
“Perhaps not.”  
  
Harry opened one eye to see Kingsley. “I don’t like the tone you say that in.”  
  
“ _Harry_.”  
  
“I don’t like the tone you say that in with all due respect to your office as the Minister and the hard work you do. Sir.”  
  
“Better.” Kingsley studied him. “There are two aspects you haven’t considered. One, you’re assuming Malfoy sent those owls. You have no proof. And what do I always say to each new set of Auror trainees?”  
  
Harry sighed a little. “Assumptions get you decapitated.” The fact that he knew the story behind that saying only depressed him further.  
  
Kingsley nodded. “Exactly. So we still need to investigate and see if it was really Malfoy or someone else.” He spread one hand. “And the other point is, if these people received owls telling them to drive you away from Malfoy’s side, who hexed his broom in the first place? During that game when you saved his life? You weren’t at his side _then_. Nor do I think anyone could have assumed he would immediately decide to have you date him.”  
  
Harry sat still, and felt stupid. “Oh.” Then he shook his head. “Maybe he set the hex on himself, sir, to see what would happen. Or maybe it was a real accident and he just had trouble with his broom.”  
  
“And maybe I’m not the Minister and you’re not my best Auror and I’m not about to set you on the case.”  
  
“ _Fine_.” Harry pouted, and climbed to his feet. “But tomorrow, please, Kingsley. I really need to take a shower to get the stink of crazy off me.”  
  
Kingsley nodded, pleased. “Waiting until tomorrow will be perfectly acceptable.”  
  
Harry shook his head as he made his way out of the Ministry. He didn’t know how he got himself into these things, he really didn’t.   
  
Other Aurors passed him, nodding to him or mouthing congratulations or condolences, depending on how much they had heard about his latest case. Harry studied them. They carried files under their arms, or they argued with other Aurors about the best way to track down Dark wizards, or they were on their way to classes full of trainees. As far as Harry knew, they all had reassuringly normal lives.  
  
His gaze fell on the hand of one Auror who was gesturing so hard she almost flung tea at the other woman she was arguing with. The glitter of the wedding ring on her finger made her hand really noticeable.  
  
 _That’s something else I need to do,_ Harry realized, pulled off the diamond ring, and veered towards the Ministry’s Owlery. He would just send the ring back to Malfoy without a note. Harry hadn’t earned the right to keep the ring.  
  
 _Maybe I keep getting into these sorts of situations because I save too many people’s lives._  
  
Harry shrugged a little as he sent the owl off. That was even possibly true. It still wouldn’t change things.  
  
He could regret lying to Malfoy; he could regret Malfoy’s craziness; he could regret falling so far into the deception and enjoying teasing Malfoy so much; he could regret the way it had ended. But he couldn’t regret something that was so much a part of him.  
  
*  
  
Harry snorted a little when he saw the white package that an unfamiliar owl brought the next day. It was wrapped in silver ribbon, and had a golden ring dangling from it as almost an afterthought. No doubt Malfoy had sent it, and there would be some indignant ranting note inside about what an unforgivable peasant Harry was, and probably also a gift that was designed to make him feel small.  
  
Harry reached for it, and then stopped, a sharp tingle racing up his arm the closer his hand got to the package. He narrowed his eyes and cast a spell. The package glowed dully, and then the glow faded away, which was what should happen.  
  
 _I’m probably being a paranoid bastard._ Harry could sometimes sense powerful Dark magic, but it was a talent that never worked predictably, and it was better when he was near people than objects. Malfoy might want to punish Harry in lots of ways, but cursing him was beyond the pale.  
  
 _Well. I think. Malfoy’s a lot more mental than I thought he was._  
  
Harry roamed in a circle around the table, casting spell after spell at the package, including a few that came near to melting the gold off the ring. None of them revealed anything wrong, and Harry was starting to feel more than a little silly for his own presumptions—until he cast one that revealed spells which would only activate if a certain condition came to pass.  
  
The package, and especially the ring, lit up like fireworks. Harry stared at the revealed colors. If he’d put on the ring, it would have melted his finger off. If he’d opened the package with emotion of some kind stewing in him, it would probably have literally blown his face off.  
  
The emotion was revealed as a glittering green morass, and Harry hadn’t used this spell in long enough that he’d forgotten what kind of feeling that shade represented. He Summoned the book from which he’d originally learned the spell to find out, keeping a wary eye on the package as he did.  
  
Green was love. The package would have killed him if he opened it with love.  
  
Harry swore and bounced the book off the edge of the table. Malfoy was mental enough to try and kill him if Harry was in love with him, then? Well, it probably made some kind of twisted sense in his brain. If Harry loved him and yet walked away, that meant that Harry was the one who had to leave a pretty corpse.  
  
 _Or something,_ Harry thought grimly as he created a Traveling Balloon around the package and the ring. The Balloon was a sort of portable round shield that sheltered the objects inside from any magical interference outside, or bumps and bruises, until the caster of the spell canceled the Balloon.  
  
 _This might not be Malfoy’s work. This might be the work of the other person who was sending the notes to Malfoy’s lovers, if Kingsley is right._  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. He might as well have stayed Malfoy’s fiancé, if he was going to get shit both for being it and not being it.  
  
He told himself sternly that his motivation for remaining that way—because he’d wanted to see what it would be like to come in Malfoy’s hands—was unworthy of an Auror, and then he seized the trailing string of the Traveling Balloon and Apparated.  
  
*  
  
“The ring was set to melt your finger off, yes.” Head Magical Theorist Ella Baravar stared into the Travel Balloon and then nodded briskly and looked at Harry. “A rather elegant spell. It was attuned specifically to your skin.”  
  
Harry decided that only people who spent the whole day looking at magic as a problem of numbers and angles could describe a curse that way. “What about the package itself?”  
  
“Let me see.” Baravar’s grey-and-black-streaked hair swayed around her ears as she bent over and poked her wand at the package. Harry flinched on instinct, but although the package trembled for an instant, Baravar didn’t trigger the spell on it or make it seem likely to go off. She traced a certain pattern on the surface of the Travel Balloon instead, and sighed in satisfaction as it turned yellow and began to pulse.  
  
“What is  _that_?” Harry had never seen a spell that mimicked that effect before, and certainly not one that was supposed to be able to reach through a Travel Balloon.  
  
“A variant of the Spell Reader.” Baravar smiled at him. “It can touch the inner  _essence_ of a spell, and of course while it doesn’t work as well as we would like in cases of multiple, layered curses, due to the conjunction between Avander’s Theorem and Millahale’s Idea—”  
  
“It can tell you what the spell is, even through the Travel Balloon,” Harry translated. As always, Baravar only seemed puzzled, rather than offended, that someone didn’t want to learn all about her esoteric art. She nodded.  
  
“Yes.” Baravar turned back to the balloon, while Harry rolled his eyes in private. He only hoped that no one ever broke into the Magical Theory Division and tried to make off with the secrets. Then again, the Aurors would probably stop them because the intruder would have a dozen theorists all clustering around them and preventing movement while they chattered about what their inventions did.  
  
“This spell was meant to kill you.”  
  
Harry straightened up. “I suspected that,” he said, while wondering what good these people were.  
  
“Kill you rather nastily.”  _Does she have to sound so_ delighted  _when she talks about that?_ Harry wondered, while Baravar went on scanning the package raptly, unaware of his thoughts. “Oh, yes. My. Decapitation combined with burning. Slow decapitation, many cuts of an axe. Rather sophisticated.”   
  
Harry shook his head. “I suppose there’s no way to tell who sent the package?”  
  
“Not unless you brought us a feather from the owl that carried it.” Baravar cast another spell, and then clucked her tongue as a second, red pattern appeared on the surface of Harry’s balloon. “Of course, who set the spell is a different matter.”  
  
“Well, the person who set the spell is presumably the person who sent it,” Harry snapped.  
  
“We don’t  _know_ that,” said Baravar, and turned a shocked face on him. “And we must always keep our minds open to possibilities. How else are we going to catch criminals?”  
  
Harry bit his tongue to avoid saying that  _they_ didn’t, that they simply stayed in their department and came up with complicated, abstract solutions to problems that had more practical applications. “Fine,” he said. “But if you think I have to look for two or three different people, then it’s going to be a lot harder for me.”  
  
“I should be able to get you one name, at least,” said Baravar, and then spent a few minutes weaving a long spell that Harry didn’t know. Harry half-suspected she was adding flourishes to the spell that didn’t really exist, simply in order to be impressive. Her fingers cracked and creaked and gestured, and then she snapped two of them.  
  
A small name appeared, floating up in smoky letters out of the mingling of the red and yellow patterns on the balloon. Harry blinked. Yes, that was impressive, although he didn’t much feel like letting Baravar know it right now.  
  
The name turned in several different directions, seemed as if the smoke that composed it might form different letters, and then settled. Harry could see the name written in the air as if in a neat hand.  
  
 _Jessica Cassel_.  
  
Harry flinched before he could stop himself. Then he shook his head. “How reliable is that spell?” he demanded of Baravar.  
  
“Oh, very reliable for a spell that’s only a few years old,” said Baravar. She’d been standing back and admiring her handiwork, and Harry’s words seemed to have snapped her from a trance. She turned and beamed at him. “Is that not a name you expected?” she added in concern upon seeing his face.  
  
Harry said nothing. He was thinking.  
  
Cassel had been one of Malfoy’s lovers, the only one Harry knew of not with the group that he’d captured outside Malfoy’s house. She would have had the chance to create the spell that attuned that ring to his skin after the game Harry had played with the Falcons. He’d touched the Snitch, which had a flesh memory. Though it was tricky magic and not of a kind that most people knew, Cassel might have been able to pull the flesh memory from the Snitch and apply it to the ring, then add another enchantment which would cause the ring to burn when he touched it.  
  
As for the spell on Malfoy’s broom, nothing easier than for a teammate to do that. Most people wouldn’t notice her casting in the excitement of watching Malfoy twitch around and Harry save him, would they? And no one would suspect her of wanting to harm her own team’s Seeker.  
  
Harry shook his head.   
  
“It wasn’t?” Baravar turned back to the name floating in the air and frowned in determination. “Well, we can try to get another one, but I think that’s at least the primary sender of the package.” She lifted her wand.   
  
“No!” Harry gripped her wrist and eased her hand back down towards her side. “I trust your conclusions,” he finished, when Baravar looked at him in a way that suggested she wanted to cast a spell on  _him_. “I just find it hard to believe that’s who it was. I hadn’t thought she was hostile to me.”  
  
 _She was the first one to tell me about Malfoy and the way he dated._  
  
But even that hadn’t felt hostile, more as if she was explaining the truth to Harry. And if she was the one responsible for hexing Malfoy’s broom, then she must have had a plan in motion before Harry interfered with it. Harry sighed. He found this case confusing enough that he could almost wish he hadn’t saved Malfoy’s life.  
  
 _Except I didn’t want to grant his wish to die with dignity, either._  
  
Harry shook his head and turned back to Baravar. “Is proof like this enough to arrest this person?”  
  
“Oh, yes.” Baravar smoothed a hand down her robes and spent a moment preening. “We rely on our evidence, and we vouch for its truthfulness. We wouldn’t have spent time trying to develop this spell if it couldn’t be used for purposes like that.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Great. Then I’ll send a few Aurors to arrest Cassel as soon as possible.” Once he would have wanted to lead them himself, but he thought it was better for him to go back to his office and try to think this through. Things would possibly only get more confusing after Cassel’s arrest.  
  
“Good luck!” Baravar called after him as Harry left the department. “Bring us any other little interesting puzzles that you have! And do ask her how she did that ring spell. Melting off others’ fingers is particularly ingenious.”  
  
*  
  
Another package sat waiting for him in the center of his desk.  
  
Harry eyed it, then promptly cast a Travel Balloon around it and made sure his door was open. If he ended up screaming for help, then he wanted other Aurors to be able to come running to his defense.  
  
But no matter what spells he cast on the package this time, it didn’t reveal any hostile intent. Harry was half-thinking about marching this one down to the Magical Theory Department, too, when the center of it unfolded like a flower, and revealed a note and another ring.  
  
Harry peered at it. The ring was the diamond one Malfoy had Transfigured for him, and the note was in Malfoy’s handwriting too.  
  
 _I think we need to talk, Potter. I never agreed to end the engagement, and the consent of both parties is traditionally necessary. And I don’t think that you’d wish to see what I’ll do if you don’t come and visit me._  
  
Harry had barely finished reading the words when the Travel Balloon popped, the ring whirled up and onto his finger, and Harry felt the tug of an enchantment he hadn’t checked for. It seemed Malfoy had turned the ring into a Portkey, and he wasn’t about to give Harry any time to think about refusing him.  
  
As he whirled into the colors that would probably end up with him in Malfoy Manor, Harry couldn’t deny the rapid beating of his heart.  
  
Or that what drove that rapid beating was mainly gladness, and excitement.  
  
 _Maybe I’m a little mental, too._


	13. Where the Heart Is

Harry staggered away from the place the Portkey had dropped him, only pausing after a minute to look around. He’d thought he would go straight back to the dining room Malfoy had expended so much effort on yesterday.  
  
But he hadn’t. Instead, he stood in a large, bare room. Harry might have thought it was a dungeon except that most dungeons didn’t have a giant ebony statue of a trumpeting elephant rearing on its haunches in the center. The elephant’s head and trunk were tilted back as if it was meant to be spraying water in the middle of a fountain.  
  
“Impressive,” Harry said aloud, and moved over to rap lightly on the elephant with his knuckles. Maybe it wasn’t ebony, at that. Maybe it was onyx. Harry wondered idly if Malfoy had interests in an onyx mine that he’d never heard of, to create a statue like this. “An elephant is one animal that I never thought to compare you to.”  
  
A torch flared off to the side. Harry turned in that direction, and abruptly all the other torches on the walls lit up in a racing circle, the flames dancing rapidly from sconce to sconce until Harry could see much more of the room.  
  
“You’ve  _got_ to teach me that spell,” Harry said admiringly.  
  
“You have to understand that I’m serious,” Malfoy said, appearing from around the other side of the statue. He paused to pose. Harry didn’t know why.  _Who finds it handsome to be standing next to an elephant?_  “You can’t break off the engagement.”  
  
“You said something about the consent of both people being necessary if I wanted to,” Harry pointed out peacefully. His heart felt as though it filled his whole chest, and he found he was grinning. He sidled a step closer to Malfoy, who turned his eyes into slits, because he apparently also thought  _that_ was attractive. “That just means I need to persuade you to do it.”  
  
“I will never,” Malfoy breathed.  
  
Harry shook his head. “You know, you were the one who made it clear that you didn’t care a Knut for what the papers thought at the Crocodiles’ party. I’m learning from you. Live up to the courage of your own convictions and stop caring that they’ll say I jilted you.”  
  
Malfoy looked at him with an absolutely blank expression on his face. At first Harry thought he was simply trying to guard his emotions, and then he realized, with a peculiar tremble behind his eyes, what it really was.   
  
“That was never part of it, was it?” Harry asked, a little dazed. “You were never worried about public perception of our engagement ending.”  
  
“Why would I? Everything I do is right.”  
  
Harry wanted to laugh, to howl, to seize Malfoy’s head and pound it into the elephant statue. Maybe that would break open his stubborn skull and bring some light in flooding in.  
  
Then again, Harry didn’t know anything about how hard onyx was. It was  _possible_ that the statue would crack instead, and Malfoy would probably just sue Harry for the cost to replace it.  
  
“Fine,” Harry said. “If it’s not about the bad publicity, what  _is_ it that makes you not want to let me go?”  
  
“You.”  
  
“Yes, I understand,” Harry said, thinking he had it figured out now. Well, pretty positive. If he didn’t, then he—well, the possibility made something that felt like the thrumming of bees’ wings flood him, but he couldn’t believe he was right. “You think that I’m going to succumb to your charm and do what you want any day now. Well, I’m _not_.”  
  
“Why not? Everyone else does.”  
  
“We had a discussion about this,” Harry murmured. “I’m not gay or bisexual, and your personality puts me off.”  
  
Malfoy dropped the last remnants of his pose and frowned at Harry. “What in the world? I’m someone who can give you whatever you want, and you like teasing me, and you were attracted to me enough to almost come in my hands. So what aspects of me could possibly displease you?”  
  
“Well, your inability to listen to my words is one of those things,” Harry said dryly. “And your personality isn’t your wealth or my liking for teasing you or your attractiveness.”  
  
“Then tell me what it is.”   
  
Malfoy sounded oddly fascinated. Harry wondered if he was the first one of Malfoy’s lovers to tell him the truth, if only because the others would have wanted to stay with Malfoy for the money and notoriety.  
  
The thought of that reminded Harry of what he was  _really_ here for. He straightened up. “Did you write letters to your former lovers demanding that they get together and attack you?” he asked.  
  
“No.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. Malfoy had been eating Harry up with his eyes when he said that, and it was hard to tell if he was sincere. “Well, then, did you tell Jessica Cassel to send me a ring that could have melted my finger off? Or a spell that would have blown me up if I’d opened the package it was attached to?”  
  
Malfoy went so still that Harry had his answer before Malfoy spoke.  _No_. For the first time, Harry thought he was seeing a look of naked shock among all those armored expressions, and he nodded slowly. Even if Malfoy was involved in some other way, he wasn’t involved in this.  
  
“I nearly didn’t touch your ring, you know,” he said confidingly, and held up the ring to show Malfoy. “I thought it would be another one like that.”  
  
“Why would she do that?” Malfoy whispered. “We parted on good terms. She would have no reason to harm you.”  
  
“Neither would most of the other people I captured the other day.” Harry folded his arms. “So what’s going on? She was the only one I  _knew_ who wasn’t there, but there might have been others missing. This is why we really need your cooperation to tell who I captured and what your relationships with them were.”  
  
Malfoy paused with his eyes so distant that Harry thought he was considering reality at last. Or just letting it into his life. The way Harry saw it, reality was all around Malfoy, but it was an open question whether he would let it intrude.  
  
Then Malfoy’s eyes snapped over to focus on him again, and he said, “Ah. I understand.  _You_ were the one who sent those letters to the others.”  
  
Harry felt his mouth open, but he couldn’t say anything. The stupidity had strangled him.  
  
Malfoy nodded once, then flew off into the clouds along his rambling track. “Yes, yes, I  _see_. How interesting. Well. I didn’t expect you to get organized that quickly, or decide that you wanted to date me that much. But it seems you were overcome by the thought of being my fiancé and couldn’t stand any competition. And now you’re making up insane stories about Jessica and rings and packages.” He gave Harry an indulgent smile. “It’s one thing to take that out on people by arresting them, but you shouldn’t try to smear Jessica’s reputation. She’s a good Chaser, and our team needs her.”  
  
He stepped up and wagged one finger at Harry. “And when we’re married, I’m not going to tolerate any pranks like that. I can barely tolerate them now. I think you should make a public apology and then tell Jessica that you won’t go after her. Oh, and tell anyone at the Ministry whom you informed of this that you made a mistake.”  
  
Harry entered a serene state. He wasn’t responsible for his actions. Malfoy was an idiot. It was deliberate provocation.  
  
No one sane could blame him.  
  
The next time he really registered what was going on around him again, he had grabbed Malfoy around the neck and was shaking him back and forth. His head would have banged against a wall if there was any near enough. As it was, he wasn’t in danger of cracking his skull. A pity. Harry thought a crack needed to be there to let light in.  
  
Then he glanced around, thought of a way to do it if onyx was hard enough, and hauled Malfoy over to the elephant statue.  
  
“ _Potter!_  What are you doing?”  
  
It was the shriek that brought him out of his daze. It sounded so much like the prissy boy from Hogwarts, who had been many things, but never  _mental_.  
  
“Well,” Harry said slowly, “I was about to beat your head to a bloody pulp on this statue.” He glanced back and forth from the statue to Malfoy, then shook his head. “But it would probably be useless. All I’d get is cracks in the statue, and you’d sue me for destroying an expensive piece of art.”  
  
Malfoy breathed carefully, watching him. He tried to shift away from Harry, but Harry wrapped an arm around his shoulders and leaned closer to him.  
  
“What’s the matter,” he whispered, “ _lover_?”  
  
Malfoy blinked and stared and blinked. Then he said abruptly, “I had no idea that Jessica was going to send you that ring.”  
  
Harry let him go. He was almost disappointed when he thought of the warmth Malfoy’s skin had given his arm and how wonderful it had been—in a strange way—to hold him close, but sanity was better than sex.  
  
 _If I could convince my dick of that, it would be fabulous_.  
  
“I did send a few notes at first, encouraging people to compete for my attentions.” Malfoy was pacing back and forth now, his robe swishing around his feet, frowning. “I wanted a fiancé, but no matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t choose one of my former lovers as better than the others. I wanted to see who was best about obeying my wishes.”  
  
Harry blinked once. “By trying to kill you?”  
  
“No,” Malfoy said. “By seeing who was  _best about obeying my wishes_.”  
  
Harry understood this time, although he wished he didn’t. “So you wanted to see who would let you die when you started falling from your broom?”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him.  
  
Harry’s head really, really hurt. So did his hands, but that problem he could at least solve by opening his clenched fists. He had no idea what he was going to do about the other one.  
  
“So,” said Harry, starting to pace around the enormous room because at least  _that_ didn’t make his head hurt, “you set this up in part to see who would let you die, or might let you die, and thus would make you the best mate?”  
  
“Yes.” Malfoy turned his head and looked at Harry with eyes like limpid pools. “Until you interfered, of course, and I had to do something, or otherwise my challenge would have been pointless.”  
  
“Who was the one who hexed your broom?”  
  
“Oh, Jessica, of course.”  
  
“Malfoy.” Harry halted and turned slowly to face him, because turning fast would only make him hurt more. “Has it ever occurred to you that there’s something wrong with you?”  
  
“Certain people have told me that,” said Malfoy, after thinking about it with obvious reluctance. “I can’t say it’s something that would have occurred on its own, though.”  
  
“But there is.” Harry went up to him and put a friendly, gentle hand on his shoulder. Malfoy didn’t shy away, which probably meant there wasn’t extensive bruising. “You wanted to die rather than tell someone that—”  
  
When Harry put it like that, though, he floundered. Rather than go to the Aurors and tell someone that he’d deliberately incited one of his teammates to hex his broom and possibly kill him? When Harry put it like that, it was so mental that Malfoy would have had to already suspect his own craziness to do that.  
  
Harry put his head in his hands.  
  
Soft footsteps padded up to him, and Harry looked up to find Malfoy stretching out his hand. His face was filled with tender compassion, which was  _possibly_ one of the most terrifying things Harry had ever seen. Voldemort might be up there, too.  
  
“I know that you didn’t sign up for this,” Malfoy whispered. “I know you didn’t expect me to have so many lovers to choose from, and you didn’t expect Jessica to hex my broom, and you didn’t know you would make yourself a target for people who were jealous of your position as my fiancé.”  
  
Harry sighed a little. “You said that you didn’t send those letters to your lovers. And you said Jessica didn’t send the package and the ring to me. But the Magical Theory Department was able to pull her name from those things via a spell. That sounds serious to me. Maybe she’s been doing things behind your back, things you don’t know about. I need to talk to her, though.”  
  
“You can’t arrest her for hexing me. It was with my knowledge and consent.”  
  
 _Your crazy consent._ Harry wondered idly if he could make a case for Malfoy not being legally competent to make up his own mind. “But I can arrest her for trying to kill me. Unless that was with your knowledge and consent, too?”  
  
“It wasn’t her.”   
  
Harry gave him a small, nasty smile. “I certainly didn’t do it to myself. Was it you?”  
  
“ _No_.”  
  
Malfoy sounded as though he had never said something more sincere in his life. Then again, he’d sounded like that at several points. Harry shook his head. “Maybe she got more jealous once you started dating me. Did you ever propose to anyone else?”  
  
Malfoy drew his head back long enough to give Harry an offended look. “Don’t you  _know_?”  
  
“Um, no. I had better things to do with my time prior to this than following the gossip columns in the paper.” Especially the ones that were likely to be half about him, Harry thought.  
  
“You were the first one I proposed to,” said Malfoy, and his voice had gone cool. He turned away from Harry to rest one hand on the elephant statue. “You were the first one I thought worthy of my reaction.”  
  
“Your reaction,” Harry echoed.  _Honestly, this gets weirder and fucking weirder._  
  
“Yes,” said Malfoy, and tossed his hair a little over his shoulder. “I wanted to see what you would do, and then I would see what I would do. It was new ground. Exciting. You were the perfect combination of someone I already knew and a stranger—someone who was strange to me because of his reactions and his heroic tendencies. The others had too much on one side or the other. I see that now. It’s why I couldn’t stay together with Pansy. I knew her too well. And Antonius was too unfamiliar, to the point that I could never understand what I was thinking.”  
  
 _That seems to be a fairly common problem._  
  
“But  _you_.” Malfoy spun around and gave Harry a warm smile. “You were the perfect combination. If you reacted, it would be in an interesting way. I  _did_ enjoy that little chase-dance we had around the Crocodiles’ party. Didn’t you?”  
  
“It was fun to thwart you,” Harry said, reckoning he could be honest.   
  
“Yes, you  _see_?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Malfoy continued prattling on, evidently not having heard him. “You were the one who would push me and pull me and keep me guessing, but also be familiar enough to me that I knew I  _could_ rile you up. Some of the people I dated turned out to be calm all the time. It was boring.” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “But you were different.” He turned and gave Harry a winsome little smile. “Thanks for being interesting.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Harry said automatically, then sighed. Malfoy was no nearer acting sane, he decided. “You won’t tell me who sent the other letters to your lovers, telling them to gather and attack the house?”  
  
“I don’t know who it was.” Malfoy sounded perfectly indifferent now. “It might have been Jessica. It wasn’t me.”  
  
Harry nodded. He was starting to believe that. Malfoy had probably told Jessica about his plans, and she had carried them further and decided that eliminating Harry was the best thing to do.  
  
Harry would still like to ask her  _why_ , but several Aurors would be on their way to arrest her by now. He’d probably hear the “why” soon enough.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Malfoy was standing right in front of him again, and still wore that winsome smile. Harry controlled the impulse to snap, and muttered, “What?”  
  
“Do you see?” Malfoy whispered. “You’re the rarest combination, and you’re also the only one of my lovers who probably understands me by this point. And the strongest of them. You wouldn’t blindly give in and do what I told you. You wouldn’t hex my broom, because you don’t believe in it.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “But I thought you were telling people to hold back because you wanted to see which one would be the most obedient.”  
  
“I was.” Malfoy looked as if he didn’t understand why Harry was telling him that.  
  
“But you wanted…” Harry shook his head again. “You  _want_ me to be disobedient?”  
  
“Only up to a point, of course.” Malfoy winked at him. “When we’re in bed, I expect you to be obedient for at least a little while, because you need to learn how to make me feel good. But after a while, I suspect you’ll surprise me even there.”  
  
He leaned nearer and muttered, “I changed my standards because of you, Harry Potter. Don’t make me regret it.”  
  
Harry didn’t even have time to retort before Malfoy’s mouth was on his, his fingers winding into Harry’s hair, and Harry found himself up against the wall of the Manor without much chance to do anything about it.  
  
 _Oh, no._ This  _isn’t going to happen again,_ Harry thought, and Stunned Malfoy.  
  
He cradled his head so that it wouldn’t bang on the floor, and then cast a Lightening Charm and scooped Malfoy up into his arms. He had questions to ask him, and maybe putting him to bed would convince him Harry was “obedient” or whatever he needed to think before he’d answer.  
  
Harry hesitated only long enough to shake his head at the elephant statue before he left the room.


	14. Where Malfoy Woke Up

“You’re sure there’s something wrong with him?” Eilir Gundar, the Ministry Healer on duty, stepped back from Malfoy’s bed and gave Harry an absurdly skeptical glance.   
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. He had taken the risk of summoning Healer Gundar through Malfoy’s Floo because he had thought someone qualified needed to look at Malfoy as soon as possible, but taking him somewhere else would probably seem like kidnapping. Not to sane people, of course. But Harry had had to accept that Malfoy didn’t really fit into that category.  
  
“I thought there was,” Harry said. “He’s admitted that he let someone almost kill him, in order to test other people.”  
  
“To see if they would rescue him?”  
  
“No, to see if they  _wouldn’t._ Because their obedience to his wishes was more important than his life.”  
  
Healer Gundar rubbed her forehead with one hand, an encouraging sign, but only sighed and shook it at Harry. “I’ve checked him for the Imperius and all spells related to it, for any kind of potion I could think of that would influence mental processes—and anyway, he would have to ingest it on a regular basis for months to influence him against preserving his own life—and even for spells that are meant to affect wealthy pure-bloods with an inheritance to leave to consider candidates outside their own families. Nothing is showing up. What you say  _is_ strange, but I don’t think he’s sick or influenced against his will.”  
  
“What about mental illness?”  
  
“I’m a magical and physical Healer, not a Mind-Healer,” said Healer Gundar, and sniffed a little. “I suppose you’d have to contact one of them to ask whether your friend was in danger.”  
  
“Not exactly my  _friend_ ,” Harry said, but he waved his hand when Healer Gundar started to turn. “Never mind. This is related to a case that grows more complicated by the day, and I’ll make sure to tell my superiors about all the help you gave me.”  
  
“By which you mean Shacklebolt.”  
  
Harry blinked innocently at her. If there was some feud going on between Kingsley and Healer Gundar, he hadn’t heard about it. Then again, he was pretty sure that wasn’t what was going on. “Yes, of course. He was the one who assigned me to this case. Is there some reason I  _shouldn’t_ report to him?”  
  
“Of course not.” Healer Gundar seemed oblivious to the way she was glancing around, as if in search of a mirror. Harry decided it would be too obvious for him to simply conjure her one. “Anyway. I must go now.”  
  
“Of course,” Harry said, and bowed and held the bow before Healer Gundar left by Floo. Then Harry shook his head and turned towards the bed.  
  
Of course Malfoy’s bedroom was probably the most magnificent room in the house, and the only surprise for Harry in it was that Malfoy had covered up the mirror that he’d had Harry preen in, the night they went to the Crocodiles’ party. A heavy green curtain hung in front of it—or perhaps the color was emerald-sheet-of-living-fire, given the complicated names Malfoy gave to hues like that. The bed had been so neatly made, the creases in the sheets so tight, that Harry had had to fight them to tuck Malfoy in.  
  
He reached now for Malfoy’s shoulder, to shake him and get him up, but a house-elf popped into being behind him. Harry turned around and saw her march towards the great carved headboard. With careful hands, she adjusted the pillows behind Malfoy.  
  
“Pillowy?” Harry asked.  
  
Even though she must have seen him, the elf still leaped in the air and squeaked with surprise as she turned around. “Master Malfoy was introducing me?” she whispered.  
  
“It was just a good guess,” Harry said, and waved a nonchalant hand, enjoying her look of wild-eyed awe. “I need some food from the kitchens.”  
  
“What kind of food, Master Harry Potter sir?”  
  
Harry shrugged. He hadn’t got that far. “Whatever you have that’s cold.  _Really_ cold,” he added, eying Malfoy.  
  
“Yes, yes, Master Harry Potter Master’s fiancé sir,” said Pillowy. She appeared to have caught sight of the diamond engagement ring that Harry had laid on the end table. Harry snorted as she Apparated out, and turned back to Malfoy.  
  
“Only you would have your house-elves add more titles to someone’s name as they got to know them, instead of less,” he told Malfoy.  
  
“ _Fewer._ ”  
  
Harry perked up. That meant Malfoy had recovered from the Stunner faster than he’d thought. “What did you say?” he asked, stepping nearer.  
  
Malfoy remained in a stubbornly, quietly breathing state, his lips a little parted and his body still and limp. Harry raised his eyebrows and stepped back.  
  
“You know you can’t escape me or ignore me forever,” he said. “You  _are_ going to wake up and we  _are_ going to have a conversation.”  
  
Malfoy continued to imitate Sleeping Beauty.  _It would be easier to laugh at him if he wasn’t so good at the “Beauty” part,_ Harry conceded.  
  
“Anyway,” Harry said, “what you say half the time makes no sense. I don’t think you can possibly be running a con game, and at the same time, you can’t possibly believe all the nonsense that you spout. You’re too smarter for that.”  
  
This time, he saw Malfoy twitch with the desire to correct the grammar error. He was  _sure_ he did, but Malfoy just lay there.  
  
Harry shrugged and turned around as Pillowy popped into the bedroom—no, wait, it wasn’t Pillowy, it was a house-elf with blue eyes, the first Harry had ever seen. Harry smiled kindly at him as he took the tray he held, which was covered with a glass of chill lemonade, glittering ices, and things that looked like cakes made of ice.  
  
“Kitcheny?” Harry guessed.  
  
“No, Master Harry Potter Master’s engaged fiancé sir,” said the elf, and bowed several times. “I is Icy.”  
  
 _Of course he has particular elves to soothe particular needs,_ Harry thought, and put the tray down on the table. “Do you make all the cold things for the Manor’s kitchens?” he asked.  
  
“Of course, Master Harry Potter Master’s engaged fiancé who should be wearing his ring sir!” Icy bowed. “Yous will be finding the food  _very_ cold.”  
  
“I count on it,” Harry said, and smiled at Icy in a way that seemed to puzzle him. “But I need to be alone with your master for me to do what I need to do.”  
  
Icy’s eyes widened, and he seemed to  _blush_. But he did disappear with a squeak. Harry shook his head. He supposed Malfoy must have had revels here in bed with lots of lovers, for the elves to react like that.  
  
Harry turned around in time to see Malfoy’s eyelids flickering a little. “It’s silly to pretend that you’re not awake,” he said, and picked up the glass of lemonade. “Last chance to act like a regular human being.”  
  
Malfoy had decided he was a marble statue.  
  
Harry shrugged and threw the lemonade over him.  
  
Malfoy sat up at once, shrieking like a wet cat. Harry followed with one of the cakes of ice, tossing it calmly onto his chest. Malfoy began clawing at his shirt, then raised a hand and touched his dripping hair and moaned. “Do you know how long that’s going to take to get  _out_?” he asked.  
  
“Here, let me help,” Harry said, and picked up one of the ices. “This will let you come clean.” He tipped the flowing chocolate and banana mess all over Malfoy, although he sincerely mourned the loss of a confection so beautiful.  
  
Malfoy lunged at him this time, his hands out and his fingers crooked into claws. It was the only weapon he had, since Harry had thoughtfully retrieved his wand and put it under the bed with a Sticking Charm on it in case Malfoy tried to Summon it. Harry dodged, let Malfoy sprawl on the floor, and shook his head. “We could continue chasing around the room for a while, or you could just tell me the bloody truth. What do you think?”  
  
Malfoy apparently thought he could twist on the floor like a real cat and come back at Harry, was what he thought. But his foot slipped in the various liquids that were cascading down his body, and he fell hard on his arse.  _What a pity,_ Harry thought, as he drew his wand and rapidly cast.  _There are so many better things that arse could be doing._  
  
Cage bars grew up from the floor as high as Malfoy’s waist, and then stopped. Malfoy didn’t try to hop over them, maybe because he knew the spell and what it would do, maybe because he just didn’t want to look silly. He glared at Harry instead. Harry leaned back and started to tick things off on his fingers.  
  
“You act like a suicidal idiot. You act as if you don’t care about your life, or in fact anything other than having your wishes obeyed. On the other hand, you still have the money and the possessions and the house that your family’s had for centuries. You would have lost it all by now if you were really  _that_ big an idiot. Plus, you have house-elves named for every function in the Manor, which means that you’re obsessively organized in at least one area of your life.” Harry leaned towards Malfoy and nodded a little. “People who are that obsessively organized in one aspect of their lives are usually obsessively organized in others, too.”  
  
“Sometimes your Auror skills are  _wrong_.” Malfoy had a dull, mottled flush on his face now, as if he had broken out in Dragonpox. Or maybe not, Harry thought. It wasn’t that bad. Dragon Unattractive Spots, maybe.  
  
His lips twitching a little at the thought of what Malfoy would do if Harry uttered the word “Unattractive” anywhere around him, Harry cocked his head. “Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. But what I know is that you haven’t told me the truth all through this. I want to know what else you’re hiding.”  
  
“Nothing. I don’t know who coordinated those mass attacks.”  
  
“And I don’t know how your other lovers could stand to be around you,” Harry said.  
  
That made Malfoy stop cold (Harry snickered to himself) in the act of reaching towards the cage bars. “What?”  
  
“I don’t mind the company of actually stupid people,” Harry explained, kicking one foot out in front of him as he lounged against Malfoy’s bed. “I think I would have got along quite well with Crabbe and Goyle if they weren’t, you know, trying to beat me up and kill me all the time when we were kids. But I mind the company of people who pretend to be stupider than they really are. You’re tiresome. How did you manage to convince that whole cavalcade of Quidditch players and pure-blood politicians and the rest that you were someone worth smiling at?”  
  
Malfoy was still frozen, staring at him. Harry helpfully picked up the next cake of ice.  
  
That got Malfoy’s tongue flapping, at least. “You assault me and take me to my bedroom and expect an answer to your questions?”  
  
“You put my life in danger and bring me to your house with an unauthorized Portkey and expect me to put up with more of your bollocks?” Harry tilted the little plate he held meaningfully.  
  
“You’re not what I thought you were,” Malfoy said softly, his eyes locked on Harry.  
  
“Well, since I don’t trust you to tell me the truth about what you thought I was, that insult doesn’t exactly sting,” Harry told him kindly.  
  
Malfoy bowed his head a second. Then he said, “And you seem as if you would distrust me no matter what I said. What’s my incentive?”  
  
Harry tilted the plate some more. Malfoy sat back in his little pen of cage bars. “Nothing a shower wouldn’t fix. Well?”  
  
Malfoy remained quiet enough that Harry thought he had chosen the shower of sweets. But just as the cake started to fall, Malfoy looked up.  
  
“I know I’m special,” he said. “I only ever doubted that during the war.”  
  
Harry caught the cake back and bit his tongue to inform Malfoy of all the many, many ways he was special, and only nodded encouragingly. If he shut Malfoy up prematurely, he thought, he might never get him to speak again.  
  
Malfoy leaned slowly back against the cage bars behind him and stared dramatically into the past. Harry waited. He would allow perhaps thirty seconds of that before he would remind Malfoy of the drama of the future.  
  
Malfoy rubbed his hands together once, and then spoke. “But I began to realize that most of the people around me didn’t see who I really was, into the core of me. They saw my money, my heritage, or my skills at Quidditch. There was no one who could value the  _whole_ person. They broke me up into little parts, and those were the things they wanted. They didn’t want the Quidditch player to donate money to them or the wealthy man to sit on his broom.”  
  
Harry felt an ache of empathy within himself that he knew he would have to control carefully. He also felt that most people didn’t see who he was, most of the time. He also felt that controlling his various selves was exhausting. He was lucky that Kingsley tolerated more of his sarcasm than a lot of bosses would have, and that he had friends who had known him so long they weren’t fooled by the walls that Harry had to put up for the press.  
  
But—and this was the difference between him and Malfoy—Harry had never told other people that they had his permission to try and kill him. So it remained to be seen how Malfoy had got from feeling isolated to going mental.  
  
“So you wanted someone to see the whole you,” Harry said. “How did that lead to  _this_?”  
  
“Some of them seemed to see me, for a little while,” Malfoy murmured. “They would give me compliments that didn’t just rely on how famous I was, or how wealthy, or how good I was in bed.”  
  
Harry remained still and silent. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. Suggesting that Malfoy might have paid attention to more things than compliments from his dates was—not a good idea right now, though.  
  
“So I did what I had to do,” said Malfoy, and sighed hard enough to pull most of the air out of his body. “I tested them. And they all failed the test. They didn’t obey me, or they started begging me for money the instant I withheld it from them, or they took their privileges for granted and tried to order me around. Dumping them was almost the only way to make them think I was serious about the test.”  
  
“Still waiting for the part where you thought it was okay to let people kill you.”  
  
Malfoy shot him a glance that was cold, but not nearly as cold as the plate Harry still held, so it was wasted effort. “They acted so desperate when I broke up with them. I started to think that maybe some of them  _could_ do what I wanted, if they only had the right incentive. So I tested them again.”  
  
“Why did you tell Cassel to hex your broom?”  
  
“She was the one who would have been the most convenient, and one of the most obedient when I was actually dating her.” Malfoy scowled a little. “And she never bothered me for Quidditch secrets since she was on the same team and knew exactly how to play the game. I’m surprised she went as far as she did.”  
  
“So you  _are_ blaming her for the attempts to kill me?” Harry surmised.  
  
“Not blaming her, not without proof. But there’s no one else who knew so quickly that I was dating you, and honestly, she’s one of the smarter people I dated. She could have come up with the plan.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “We have only a bit of evidence right now, but if she’s innocent, then the Aurors will find out.” He put the cake of ice back on the table. “All right, Malfoy, that’s what I wanted to know. Go enjoy your shower.” He undid the Sticking Charm on Malfoy’s wand under the bed, and it rolled out on the floor. Harry nodded to him and made for the door.  
  
“ _Where do you think you’re going_.”  
  
Malfoy  _had_ made his voice colder than the things he was covered with, this time. Harry turned around and applauded. “Keep that up, and you might have a career as an actor ahead of you,” he said.  
  
“I meant it,” Malfoy said, and stepped over the cage bars. Without Harry to control them, they didn’t jump up to chest height and keep him imprisoned the way they would have otherwise. “Where do you think you’re going? Do you think you can just walk away from me after that? I told you the truth! That was what you said you wanted!”  
  
“I have no desire to date someone who thinks he should test people and that everyone else should pay him compliments all the time,” Harry pointed out. “Besides, I have no need for your money or your fame, and I know how to play Quidditch just as well as you do. If you want to know what your lovers want, what did you think would keep me around?”  
  
“You could just want  _me_.” Malfoy’s voice was slow and soft. “Someone who knows the real you, the way you know the real me.”  
  
Harry hesitated, and Malfoy took the chance to come to a stop in front of him and look Harry slowly up and down. Harry braced himself against the effects of that gaze, wishing he’d kept one cake of ice to slap over his disobedient groin.   
  
“You didn’t reveal your real self to me without extreme coaxing,” Harry said. “I don’t think that you could tell the truth about me.”  
  
“I could if you told me.” Malfoy smiled faintly at him. “And everything you said applies to me, too. I’m not going to date you for the prestige of being seen with the Boy-Who-Lived. I know you can do lots of things I can’t. But I can entertain you and make you  _burn_. How many other people can say the same?”  
  
Harry thought about it. And this time, he thought, his mind was a lot clearer than it had been the other two times.  
  
“I want to know I can trust you,” Harry said. “We’ll give it a while and see if it works out.”  
  
“You lied to me  _too_!”  
  
“Hence why we should give it a while.” Harry had to grin at the way Malfoy looked almost ready to dance with outrage. “Don’t you think we should?”  
  
“I think you don’t get to choose when to walk away from me!”  
  
“Then get used to it,” Harry said. “Or find someone you want more.” He smiled at Malfoy. “Thank you for helping with my case.” He walked serenely away.  
  
“ _Potter_!”  
  
“Floo me tomorrow if you’re still serious,” Harry said. “And not before then.”  
  
The nice thing about the thickness of Malfoy’s bedroom door was that when Harry shut it, all his complaints were cut off.


	15. Where To Find Harry Potter

“We have Jessica Cassel in one of the interrogation rooms now, if you’d like to speak with her, Auror Potter.”  
  
Harry nodded and stood up. “I would like to.”  _I’d like to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing. And if her act of sanity when she was telling me the “rules” of dating Malfoy was really just an act, or what._  
  
The younger Auror who had come to fetch him kept casting glances of awe at Harry as they traveled down the corridor. Harry finally curled his tongue back and wriggled it when she turned back to look at him. The Auror trainee blushed and muttered something about having a boyfriend.  
  
Harry grinned. “It has nothing to do with wanting to flirt with you. I just want you to stop looking at me like I’m a demigod.” He would have said “like a god” a fortnight ago, but the glances she used were nothing like the praise Malfoy demanded.  
  
“Oh! Oh, sorry.” The girl flushed brilliantly and scurried ahead. Harry thought she was in her mid-twenties at least; not a whole lot of people got to be Aurors earlier. So maybe she wasn’t really a girl.  
  
 _But she’s acting like one._  
  
On that auspicious note, Harry didn’t think the interview with Cassel would go that well, and he was right. She was sitting back behind the table as if it was her choice to be here, looking around. Harry half-expected her to criticize the decorating scheme, or rather the lack of one, on the interrogation room’s walls.  
  
She glanced at him and nodded. “Auror Potter. When do you think they’ll let me out of here?”  
  
“When they have some understanding of what it means that I received a ring that could have burned my finger off.” Harry sat down in the chair across from her and gave her a sympathetic smile that he thought outdid hers in falseness. “So not for a while, unless you plan to confess.”  
  
Cassel sat up. “They said something about that when they arrested me, but  _strangely_ , it seemed as though they were reluctant to provide proof.”  
  
Harry shrugged and said, “It was a spell used in the Department of Magical Theory to pull out names of people who have been involved in the preparation of certain curses. Your name was there. If you consent to actually answer questions, we’ll get a Pensieve and I’ll show you the memory. In the meantime, you can take my word for it, the word of someone who was there.”  
  
Cassel’s face had begun to turn grey. Harry thought he knew what that meant, but he still wanted to hear an explanation of her motives. For a moment, he regretted that he didn’t have a house-elf called Guilty here to take dictation.  
  
 _Ah, well. Pensieve memories work as evidence of confessions, too._  
  
“I never did anything to you.” Cassel whispered it without the force of any breath behind the words, but she was already lifting her head and recovering her poise a little. “Other than try to warn you away from Draco Malfoy, the way he breaks people.”  
  
“You also said that if he claimed to be dating me, there was nothing I could do about it.”  
  
Cassel gave him a glance that said clearly she hadn’t expected Harry to remember her words, and thought it unfair that he did. Harry grinned back unrepentantly. He could see the first glimmerings of true anger in her face. Push her to the edge, let the anger dance, and she might tell him something. It was a tactic he had used more times than he could count in extracting confessions.  
  
And even if it didn’t work as well as he thought it might right now, it was still fun to wind people up.  
  
“You didn’t need to get as close to him as fast as you did,” Cassel whispered with a hiss between her teeth. “No one else ever did that. He never proposed to anyone else.”  
  
 _Ah. That sounds like the beginning of a confession_. “What can I say?” Harry placed a hand on his chest and fluttered his eyelashes a little, turning his head. “I’m so irresistible that he wanted to make a life with me even though he knew I’m straight.”  
  
“Less straight than you  _said_  you were!”  
  
Cassel sounded weirdly angry about that. Then again, she had sounded the same way when she told Harry that Malfoy was bisexual and asked if he had a problem with it. Harry seized on something else he could play with. “You don’t get to define what he and I were. Your time with him was over.”  
  
Cassel actually lunged forwards enough to tug at the ropes that bound her. Harry clucked his tongue. “You’ll want to watch that expression when you get ready to testify in court,” he told her.   
  
It would sound in the Pensieve memories as if he was warning her, but his tone was a knife designed to slip under her ribs, and Cassel went berserk. “You could  _never_ be what he wanted!” she hissed, and tossed her hair as if she wanted to show something off. Harry had no idea what it was, but he  _was_ getting impressed with how crazy she was. “You played him. He wanted obedience! You kept challenging him and trying to return his ring. He wanted someone who would wear it with  _honor!_  With  _pride!_ ”  
  
“That all may be true,” Harry said, nodding slowly. “It doesn’t give you the right to try and murder me.”  
  
Goaded, Cassel sneered, “The others were already poised to try when they heard about the ring. I merely gave them the ideas.” Then she slammed her mouth shut and stared around as if trying to find the location of the monitoring spells that she must know were on the room.  
  
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she whispered.  
  
“How  _did_ you mean it, sweetheart?” Harry draped his chin over the back of his chair and fluttered his eyelashes at her.  
  
“You’re  _impossible_.” Cassel glanced over at the corner of the room and seemed to believe that pretending to be a statue would save her. “I want someone else to talk to.”  
  
“Certainly, that’s your right,” Harry said, and stood up.  
  
“Wait. If that’s the case, then why did you come and talk to me first of all?” Cassel was staring at him with a betrayed look, as if Harry had been the one to try to murder her instead.  
  
Harry gave her a slow wink. “Because I was told that you’d been asking for me and wanted an explanation as to why you’d been arrested. Was that wrong? I mean, the others could have explained the charge to you, but certainly in nothing like the  _detail_ I was able to give you.” He swanned his way to the door, watching over his shoulder for a moment.  
  
Cassel was straightening with a lost look on her face. “This—isn’t fair.”  
  
“If you want to take Veritaserum,” Harry said calmly, “or give someone Pensieve memories, or outright change your story, that’s also your right. What I did was give you the chance to speak freely. We have enough suspicions to be going on with. Unless you’re going to tell me that you didn’t mean all that stuff you said about Malfoy and who dates him and what you feel about my relationship with him.” He paused with a hand on the door, smiling winsomely at her.  
  
It seemed Cassel had finally learned how to shut her mouth, although maybe too late, because she turned her head away and pinched the insides of her cheeks firmly with her teeth. Harry laughed a little and went out.  
  
Two other Aurors met him right outside the door, and Harry nodded to them. “She’s asking for someone else to talk to, but she’s admitted a few incriminating things. Handle her as gently as you want to.”  
  
He strolled off down the corridor, chuckling. It did look like Cassel was the one who had come up with the more violent plans to attack Harry. She might have an explanation yet for the way the Magical Theory Department’s spell had shown her name attached to the ring and the package, but Harry politely doubted it at the moment.  
  
He could leave the questioning of her to other people. He probably  _should,_ since he’d come right up to the border of what was acceptable for an Auror who was questioning a criminal. And he could go home and relax and wait for the reports on this case to come in, or until someone needed him to confirm Cassel’s story, or until he was assigned another case.   
  
He  _could_.  
  
But he could also go write a letter and see what happened, and that was the course Harry chose to pursue right then.  
  
As the owl went winging on its way, heavy letter clutched in one heavy talon, Harry pictured Malfoy reading it, and grinned.  
  
*  
  
The owl that flew through the window did so with a screech. It wasn’t the one Harry had sent with Malfoy’s letter.   
  
Harry lowered the paper and raised his eyebrows. He had gone to the  _Daily Prophet_ and asked for all their back gossip pages, the ones that discussed Malfoy and his love affairs. The keepers of the papers’ archives had been overwhelmed by the request, and Harry thought it showed in the untidiness of the piles they’d handed him.  
  
He’d stuffed his head full of unsubstantiated wedding dates and speculations on how much Malfoy made a year and whether it was sufficient to keep one of his lovers in clothes, and was glad to turn his mind to something more explosive. He held out his hand.  
  
The owl circled above him. Harry watched it a second, then nodded. When the owl swerved towards one corner of the expansive kitchen, Harry tapped his wand against the table and muttered a short trigger word.  
  
The owl passed through the corner, and squawked abruptly as it found its wings caught. It chopped and cut the air with them, and screamed in Harry’s face when he walked over to retrieve the letter it carried. Harry simply shook his head. He had to dodge a few talon swipes, but in the end, he got the letter and walked back to the table.  
  
Malfoy’s letter had no hexes on it that would make Harry’s fingers melt off, but honestly, he’d forgotten to check for them anyway. When he recognized the handwriting on the envelope, he smiled and tore it open effortlessly.  
  
The letter started with his name only, a stark reminder that Malfoy was probably writing as fast as he could.  
  
 _Harry,_  
  
 _You may have been right about Jessica going further than she should have by attacking my other lovers. And maybe you’re right that I took unnecessary risks by telling her to hex my broom and the others not to rescue me._  
  
 _But you’re wrong that I have nothing to offer you. I have_ lots  _to offer. You already said I was teaching you how to handle the press better than you’d been doing up until that point. You could use humor. I know I appeal to your sense of humor._  
  
 _You don’t need my wealth. But you could enjoy the fruits of it, like the restaurant I’ve already taken you to. I never see reports in the papers about you visiting places like that. I know you could afford it. Is it just because you want to work all the time and never take any holidays for yourself?_  
  
 _I could teach you how to relax. Or at least how to pull back from work, because you would spend so much time chasing after me and countering my plans that you would have to think about something besides work_ some  _of the time._  
  
 _And I do want you. I’m attracted to you. I meant what I said about you being the right mix of strangeness and familiarity to challenge me. If…_  
  
There was a strand of ink blots after that that took up half the page. Harry skipped calmly downwards and found the place where the words started again.  
  
 _If you really mean that you don’t want me, but how can you, then I’ll go away and I won’t bother you anymore. But I think I could give you what you need._  
  
 _Draco_.  
  
Harry shook his head and laid the letter down. He let the wildly screeching owl out of the trap, and it fell halfway to the table before it caught itself and promptly flew through the window. Harry grinned after it, and then stood up with a thoughtful smile for the letter.  
  
He wasn’t going to write back. For honesty and incomprehension of this magnitude, Harry thought Draco deserved at least a Floo call.  
  
*  
  
“Harry?”  
  
The note in Draco’s voice tugged at Harry’s heartstrings. The problem was, it was probably  _designed_ to tug at heartstrings. Harry made his voice and face both gentle and stern as he nodded. “Yes.”  
  
“Forgive me,” Draco said, as he ran a hand through his hair. It was wet and stuck up a little in the back. “I haven’t had time to dry it.”  
  
“I like it better this way.”  
  
Draco dropped his hand and gaped at Harry as if that was absolutely incomprehensible to him. Much like the other things he’d written about in the letter, Harry thought. He sort of wanted to shake Draco, but that wouldn’t help him get through to him. He kept patiently gazing instead, and Draco finally cleared his throat awkwardly and turned around.  
  
“I—could invite you in and give you some refreshment.”  
  
“We can talk here.”  
  
Draco finally scowled and turned around to sit down next to the Floo. “Are you being this uncooperative because I irritated you? I’m  _sorry_. But I don’t know what to do with you. You’re too—different from all the rest.”  
  
“And I think you’re different from pretty much any other person I’ve ever dated, too,” Harry said, leaning his elbows on the hearth and studying Draco thoughtfully. “I mean, besides being male.”  
  
Draco snorted a little. “That really isn’t as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Maybe not.” He  _was_ less concerned about it than he’d expected to be. “Listen. I want to know how you were planning to use that test to pick between your lovers. If all of them held back and let Cassel hex your broom—which all of them did—then how would you know which one was most worthy?”  
  
“I would come up with some other test.”  
  
Harry nodded, sort of having expected that answer. “That’s part of the problem, then. I don’t want someone who tests me constantly. And I’m afraid that’s what I’m going to get if I become your lover.”  
  
“Fiancé,” Draco corrected instantly.  
  
“We’re talking about lovers first.”  
  
“We’re talking about the whole thing.” Draco lay down as if he thought he would get more of what he wanted by staring into Harry’s eyes. “Because that’s what I want you for. A more permanent and lasting commitment than any lover I’ve ever dated.”  
  
“You proposed marriage to me after knowing me half an hour—”  
  
“I’ve known you for sixteen years,” Draco corrected, and his smile was gone. “Did you think that you were the only one who could be serious,  _Harry?_ Because that’s not the truth. Of course I would prefer it if I could get someone who perfectly fits my specifications the first time out. And maybe it would have been better for me to wait before I proposed. But all I could think of at the moment was that you fit me better than anyone else did—you  _already_ did—and I needed to keep hold of you somehow.”  
  
“ _All_?” Harry raised an eyebrow at him and waited.  
  
It took almost a minute to happen, but Draco did turn a little pink. “All right, and I wanted to impress the people who were watching,” he muttered.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said happily. If Draco hadn’t been able to acknowledge that much, then Harry would have had to close the door on this thing between them, even as unexpectedly attractive as he was finding the whole prospect.  
  
“I need to know if you can make a commitment to me,” Draco said. “We’ve already acknowledged all the differences that lie between us, right? So there should be no trouble in you coming back to me?” His gaze was roaming up and down Harry hopefully.  
  
“Oh, no,” Harry said. “There are a few barriers. Like the fact that we’ve only been on one date together, and that was somewhere you picked.”  
  
“Two dates,” Draco corrected, and when Harry felt his face twitch, he added, “I count you touching yourself under your Quidditch robes at my game a date.”  
  
“Fine,” Harry said, while he tried to deal with the flush in his own cheeks. “But I want you to come on a date with me, to a place I choose.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“The Leaky Cauldron.”  
  
Draco was the one who twitched his time, like someone under an Uncontrollable Dancing Jinx. “But they probably haven’t cleaned their stools in ten years,” he whispered.  
  
“Oh, I think you’re underestimating them,” said Harry cheerfully. “It’s been much longer than that.”  
  
“The mugs,” Draco whispered, in what sounded like a trance of horror.  
  
“Seven-o’clock on Friday,” Harry said. “The Leaky Cauldron. You’ll be there?”  
  
“You could be with me eating off golden plates at any one of half a dozen restaurants I know,” Draco said, firing up. “You could—”  
  
“I’m allergic to the taste of gold unless it’s your hair against my lips,” Harry cut in, and had the pleasure of seeing Draco stare at him in a stunned way. “So. We’re on?”  
  
“This should show you the depth of my commitment to you.”  
  
“It should,” Harry agreed. “If it actually happens. Is it going to or not?”  
  
Draco gave a sigh that Harry thought would have been better employed by someone who was standing on the edge of an enormous cliff. “All right. Seven-o’clock on Friday. I  _must_ be mad.”  
  
“Just mad about me,” Harry said, and winked, and cut the Floo connection. Then he rolled over and laughed for at least a minute.  
  
He didn’t know if this would work out. He hoped it did, but Draco was by no means predictable.  
  
But either way, he couldn’t wait for the sight of Draco Malfoy walking into the Leaky Cauldron.


	16. When They Went to the Leaky Cauldron

“Oi, Harry! Mind explaining why you’re so l—”  
  
Harry had never walked in the middle of a spreading cloud of dismay before. Of course he’d seen it behind him, when Draco Apparated in and looked at the Leaky Cauldron’s front door and shuddered profoundly. But most of the time, when he walked into a crowded place like the pub, silence spread around him for a moment, and then roars of his name or good-natured jokes or requests for his autograph. This time, he might have been carrying a whole bunch of rotted meat.  
  
Ron shoved his chair back from the table. Hermione sat where she was, although it looked as if her eyebrows would fly off her forehead and go all the way up to the ceiling, but Ron aimed his wand. “What is Malfoy doing here?”  
  
Harry turned around as if he’d forgotten Draco’s existence himself, and then said, “Oh, that’s right. We’re here on a date.”  
  
He didn’t think there were many people who hadn’t heard that he and Malfoy were dating by now, but that still made several of the spectators reel in their chairs. Draco sank down in his own chair and folded his arms on the table in front of them, as if he needed a cushion for his head. Then he drew back his arms to stare at the elbows of his robe in horror.  
  
Harry didn’t snicker, because sometimes he had superhuman control. He just didn’t always choose to exercise it. He sat down primly next to Draco and leaned forwards to press his nose against the end of Ron’s wand. Unnerved, Ron drew his wand back and placed it on the table, shaking his head.  
  
“You didn’t really answer me,” Ron said.  
  
“Yes, I did. We’re on a date.” Harry noticed that Hermione looked as if she would expire of suppressed laughter in a second, and grinned and winked at her before he turned to Draco. “What would you like to eat?”  
  
“What has the least grease and dirt?” Draco’s lips barely moved.  
  
“Of course  _the great Draco Malfoy_ would find something wrong with ordinary plebian pub food,” Ron sneered, rolling his eyes.  
  
“The great Draco Malfoy” was about to faint from horror, rather than puffed up with arrogance, Harry thought. But he also thought that he was the only one at the table who could tell that. “The fish and chips are actually pretty good,” he said gently.  
  
“Harry! Why are you  _coddling_ him?”  
  
“Because we’re on a date,” Harry explained, and glanced at Draco. “You don’t have to have them. But I think they would be the best choice.”  
  
Draco took quick, shallow breaths, as if that would mean he’d let in the least amount of air to his lungs, and then turned his head and looked with glazed eyes at Harry. Harry tried not to think about how much he looked like a cat hit by a Muggle car.  
  
“Whatever you think best,” Draco whispered, and then drew his wand and cast a frantic spell in front of him.  
  
Ron dodged, bellowing, but Harry only watched, and grinned when a little whirlwind of white and green opened up in front of Draco’s mouth. Draco breathed it in, and then sighed and sat back. Of course, he had to immediately turn his head so that he could check the state of the stool under his arse.  
  
“What was that, then?” Ron still looked as if he’d have a lightning bolt striking down into the middle of the table any second. Or maybe as if he thought he’d have to raise a Shield Charm to hold back  _Draco’s_ lightning bolt.  
  
“It’s an Air-Freshening Charm,” Harry murmured. “The sort of thing you’d use in a closed-in building or tunnel.”  
  
“I’ll need another one in a minute,” Draco said. His head lolled. He gave Harry a pitiful look that Harry cheerfully ignored. This wasn’t one-quarter as mad as some of the things Draco had already done. He needed to get used to more sanity and less madness in his daily diet, anyway. “How can you  _breathe_ in here?”  
  
Ron opened his mouth to say something else, but Hermione spoke before he could, and her voice was earnest in a way that Harry knew meant she’d seen the possibilities to screw with Draco. “Oh, well, you see, we’re accustomed to living at lesser heights. We don’t set ourselves up on mountains often.”  
  
Harry grinned and stood to go get the fish and chips and the butterbeer that were all he was going to drink. He didn’t bother asking about a drink for Draco. It would be butterbeer, because anything else would just make him shudder anyway.  
  
Draco caught hold of his cloak, making Harry look at him patiently. Draco mouthed, “Don’t leave me here alone with them.”  
  
Well, no, he didn’t mouth the  _whole_ sentence, because Harry wasn’t that good at reading lips. Anyway, it made enough noise to cause Ron to growl indignantly from across the table and Hermione to say, sincerely this time, “What do you think we’re going to do to you, Malfoy?”  
  
“It’s not anything you can help,” Draco said, turning around and looking at them with a desperate, pale dignity that reminded Harry of a shaved poodle still trying to pretend it had all its fur. “It’s not—it just hovers around you all the time, and it’s no wonder you don’t notice it. It would be like asking fish to notice water,” he concluded, with a little chuckle that he probably meant to sound nobly self-deprecating.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Ron said.  
  
Draco leaned near and whispered the word as if he thought they would stuff it down his throat and make him try to eat it if they could actually hear it. “Vulgarity.”  
  
Harry thought that an excellent time to go get the food and drinks. Tom was staring hard from behind the bar, though, and moved his eyes only slowly back to Harry. “What is  _he_ doing here?”  
  
“We’re on a date,” Harry explained. “Two plates of fish and chips, please. And two mugs of butterbeer.”  
  
“And he’s going to eat that? And pay for it?” Tom was getting the mugs out, but he kept looking at Draco, even when Harry stepped in his way and he had to lean around Harry to do it. “Did you tell him that I’ve never had a  _Malfoy_ gracing my establishment?”  
  
“No, because I think he knows,” Harry said. “Butterbeer for both of us, right,” he added, because he’d seen Tom starting to reach for the bottle of Firewhisky.  
  
Tom pulled his hand back and looked Harry in the eye. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, and lowered his voice coaxingly. “Come on. You may have to tell the papers all that nonsense about dating him, after he claimed you were his fiancé, but you can tell  _me_ the truth. What are you doing with him?”  
  
“Dating him,” said Harry serenely.  
  
Tom flung up his hands. “On your head be it, then,” he said, and paused when he saw the way Harry watched him pour the butterbeer into the mugs. “What?”  
  
“Butterbeer only in the mugs,” Harry murmured. “No saliva, please.” Then he met Tom’s indignant eyes and smiled. “But the mugs can be as dirty as you like.”  
  
*  
  
By the time he went back to the table with the food and drinks, Harry had to fight to keep from chuckling. Honestly, he should have tried this before. Dating Draco gave him the ability to torment  _everyone_ , not just Draco.  
  
Ron and Hermione were squeezed together on their side of the table, studying Draco as if they thought he was still a Death Eater. Harry shook his head as he sat down. “He’s still mental, but not that kind of mental,” he assured them.  
  
Draco turned around to stare at him, face so long that Harry would have liked to spend some time measuring it. “What are you talking about, Potter? I didn’t know you were a Legilimens. Did you read their minds?”  
  
“Of course not. I just know them well enough to know what they’re thinking,” Harry said, and put his butterbeer and fish and chips in front of him. Draco glared at them as if he could, by the mere power of his eyes, transform them into some dish and drink with French names. Unsympathetically, Harry leaned over to whisper into Draco’s ear, “And I thought you’d agreed my name was  _Harry_.”   
  
Draco almost swallowed a chip wrong, and turned to glare at Harry. Harry shrugged unrepentantly and leaned back, letting the tip of his tongue linger on Draco’s earlobe for a moment. When Harry turned around, his friends were staring at him, too.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?” Hermione whispered. She seemed to have lost her sense of humor about the whole situation.  
  
Nor did she seem very reassured by the way Harry smiled at her and whispered, “Dating.”  
  
Hermione’s hand trembled a little, and then she said, “If you say that one more time, Harry Potter, I am going to throw this in your  _face_.” She hefted her own drink, which Harry thought was Firewhisky.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to respond in good fun, and then realized Draco was on his feet, one arm trembling as he stood with his extended wand pointed right at Hermione.  
  
“Never threaten him when I’m around,” Draco whispered, swaying a little as he leaned forwards and stared Hermione down. “You don’t  _want_ to know what I’ll do to you.”  
  
There was a moment of thick silence, when Harry thought either Ron or one of the other people staring at their table with their mouths open would intervene. Then Hermione snorted, reached over, and pushed down Draco’s wand.  
  
“Sit down, Malfoy, you’re drunk.”  
  
“But he only has butterbeer,” Ron began, in a whisper that would have been audible even in a thunderstorm.  
  
“I  _said_ he’s drunk.” Hermione glared at Ron until he dropped his eyes, then around the whole of the Leaky Cauldron, filled with people who suddenly found urgent things to tend to on the other side of the room or on their own tables. Hermione turned back around. Harry pushed gently on Draco’s shoulder, then not so gently, and finally he sat down again.   
  
“Making up your own reality seems to be a popular sport around here,” Hermione said, her voice low but vicious. “Harry, you and Malfoy have made up a reality between you where you’re his fiancé and that’s not a pretense, not just for the sake of the case or not embarrassing Malfoy in public, but  _real_ —”  
  
“Not his fiancé,” Harry corrected her gently. “Dating.”  
  
Hermione’s mug swung up, containing the threatened Firewhisky; Harry shot his wand out and created a small shield; the Firewhisky swished down and splattered on the table. Harry saw Tom shaking his head from the corner of his eye. He grinned and cast a few Drying Charms. At least Tom wouldn’t be able to blame Draco for this particular problem.  
  
“I did warn you,” said Hermione, while Ron stood up, said something indistinct but distinct enough about this being “too weird for him,” and went to get her another drink.  
  
“That you did,” said Harry, and nodded at her. He turned to Draco and gently dried his sleeve centimeter by centimeter, pulling it away from his arm to do it. Draco only looked at him with eyes so wide that Harry wasn’t sure he was taking in. “What were you saying?”  
  
“Making up your own reality is a popular sport,” Hermione repeated grimly. “So I’m going to make up my own, where you know what you’re doing, Harry, and you appreciate that you’ve got, Malfoy. It’ll save me a lot of time worrying about things that I don’t  _want_ to concern me that much.”  
  
“That’s so sweet of you!” Harry gushed at her, and winked when Hermione caught his eye. She looked grim for long enough that Harry thought she was going to take back what she’d said, but then she leaned back and shook her head with some determination.  
  
“You are  _not_ going to get to me,” she said, and turned her back to take her drink from Ron, who was still looking as though he couldn’t even accept the reality of Harry and Draco dating, much less one where they appreciated each other.  
  
Harry turned to smile at Draco, who was staring at him as if he was the mad one. Harry put his hand beneath his chin. “Tell me what you think of the décor, Draco.”  
  
“It reminds me of the time I fed my Kneazle most of my sweets when I was three and he threw up all over my room,” Draco snapped at once.  
  
 _This wouldn’t be fun if he wasn’t at least a little reluctant to go along with it._ Harry nodded gravely. “And the stools represent what? The chewed-up Chocolate Frogs? I think they look a little more like half-digested Cauldron Cakes, myself.”  
  
Draco stared some more, and then leaned forwards and rested his forehead against the table after all. Harry waited, but he didn’t jerk back with panicked commentary about the mug-rings he was doubtless getting on his skin. Harry blinked, mildly impressed. He  _was_ far gone.  
  
“You’re ridiculous,” Draco whispered. “And the tests that you insist on inflicting on me are ridiculous.”  
  
“Welcome to my perception of what you’ve put me through in the last few weeks.”  
  
Draco snapped his neck up so hard that something in it popped, and he immediately groaned and pressed his hand to his nape, arching as he tried to get rid of the ache. Harry nodded sympathetically. “I know. The truth hurts.”  
  
“Your tests and my tests are  _nothing_ alike,” Draco said. “I wasn’t trying to disgust you! I was trying to gift you with the most luxury that I could when you seemed on the verge of rejecting my ring every time I presented it to you.”  
  
“But you never thought your attitude and your possessiveness and your insistence on not telling the truth would disgust me?”  
  
“I only lied about the people who originally tried to kill me and about who originally hexed my broom! And you did your share of lying to me.”  
  
“I already acknowledged that,” Harry said. “I felt awful enough about it that I tried to give you back your ring, remember? But you still seem to think that what  _you_ did was the right thing. Is that because you don’t see what I find wrong with it, or because it’s your conduct, so therefore it ought to be excused because it’s you?”  
  
Draco was facing him on the stool now, and seemed to have forgotten the debate about whether it was more like a Chocolate Frog or more like a Cauldron Cake completely. He whispered, “What are you doing?”  
  
“Dating you.” Harry smiled at him.  
  
“I’m sorry that I ever taught you to be this exasperating.”  
  
Harry had the distinct impression that his friends were looking at them across the table, but since they had already decided not to pay attention to what Harry and Draco did, that wasn’t a problem. Harry mustered a dazzling smile and said, “Now you understand. If you find it so exasperating to be subjected to this treatment, how do you think I felt?”  
  
Draco looked away from him. “It had nothing to do with you specifically. It was about things I’d wanted long before you entered the picture.”  
  
“Then it really doesn’t matter whether or not I’m your fiancé. You can take back the ring and just never answer the questions the papers ask.” Harry nodded a little. Part of him was bitter, but a much larger part still wanted to laugh, and it was hard to be bitter when that was the case. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. I won’t be part of it, though.”  
  
Draco drew in a sharp, hurt breath. Well, Harry would have thought it was hurt if it was coming from anyone else. The problem with Draco was that he could never really be sure. Harry leaned back on his stool—it  _was_ more like a Cauldron Cake—and studied Draco carefully.  
  
Draco took some time to sit there with his eyes shut. Then he said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”  
  
“How did you mean it?”  
  
Harry knew, because he was precisely controlling his voice, that he didn’t sound mean or angry or impatient, but Draco still gave him an ugly look before he muttered, “I meant—I meant that I would have treated anyone I thought worthy of being my fiancé the same way. But there’s not anyone else who’s worthy of being my fiancé. There’s only you.”  
  
Harry reached out and slid his hand gently around Draco’s, grasping his fingers. “Good boy,” he whispered. “So it  _does_ matter to you which one of your lovers wins that battle, after all.”  
  
“It never used to,” Draco said. “They were all the same to me, never what I needed.”  
  
Harry shrugged a little. “If I’m not what you need, you can tell me to leave. But I’m going to reserve the same right when it comes to you.”  
  
Draco sat there looking…neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, actually, Harry thought. Merely as if he had never thought that someone would have that much power over him. He caught Harry’s eye and nodded once.  
  
“And it’s Chocolate Frogs,” he said.  
  
Harry kissed his fingers and smiled at him in silence. It seemed that he was, indeed, dating Draco Malfoy.


	17. When Draco Spoke of the Longing In His Heart

“Well. That was fun.” Harry grinned as they appeared before the gates of Malfoy Manor, and turned to hold his hand out to Draco. “Thanks for agreeing to come, Draco. I know my friends were probably a little baffled by you, but.” He shrugged. Ron and Hermione would eventually take it in good part. They’d been with him through lots of harder things.  
  
 _Though, I have to agree, probably not many things that are as confusing._  
  
It abruptly occurred to Harry that Draco hadn’t shaken his hand. And he hadn’t turned and gone through the gates in disgust, either. Harry glanced up with his eyebrows raised.  
  
Draco leaned on the gates and stared at him. Then he said, “Do you think I’m still mental?”  
  
“In a unique way,” Harry said soothingly.  
  
“It’s not mental to be disgusted by layers of dirt on stools and mugs.”  
  
“No, but it is to try and have people kill you to prove their loyalty.”  
  
Draco made a motion as though he could sweep Cassel and his other lovers and his whole stunt with making Harry his fiancé under the rug. Harry grinned again. He would probably get at least one more good sparring contest with Draco out of this. He hadn’t realized how much he’d grown to enjoy their arguments until tonight, when it had been  _fun_.  
  
Instead of protesting Harry’s assessment or something, though, Draco slowly lifted his head. “And you’re going to leave no matter what I say?”  
  
“You mean, stop dating you?” Harry shook his head. “I thought you knew by now that I want to date you. I wouldn’t have stood up to Ron and Hermione like that if I wasn’t serious.”  
  
“No,” said Draco. “I mean—you’re going to leave me here like this and go away without so much as a kiss?”  
  
He lowered his voice on the last words in a way that did wonders for Harry’s groin. Harry smiled as he eased up on him. Draco stood there with wide, vulnerable eyes and waited. He seemed to have done as much as he could by asking for the kiss.  
  
 _But I don’t need him to do any more,_ Harry conceded, and wrapped his hand around the nape of Draco’s neck, and leaned in to kiss back.  
  
Draco’s hands rose in seconds, clamping on his neck with such strength that Harry was just glad Draco didn’t seem to go in for strangulation. He dragged Harry with him, and they both fell against the gates. Harry winced for a second, trying to lift his head. The only thing he could think about was how the metal of the gates must be digging into Draco’s back.  
  
But Draco’s face shone as if he was possessed, and he ruthlessly dragged Harry’s head down again. Harry found himself being thoroughly, desperately kissed.  
  
And yes, it was special.  
  
He caught Draco with one hand on his shoulder so both of them wouldn’t trip, and they stood there, kissing and kissing until Harry’s mouth felt a little numb. He pulled back, licking his lips and trying not to shake his head, because Draco would probably take that the wrong way. But he  _did_ wonder what should happen next.  
  
Draco seemed to have no doubt. He drew his wand and cast a wordless charm on himself. Harry only recognized it because he knew the wand motions. A Lightening Charm. Draco put the wand back in his pocket and leaped into Harry’s arms. Harry still grunted a little, but it was a lot easier to carry him than it would have been if he hadn’t cast the charm.  
  
“Let’s go,” Draco said, lounging against Harry’s chest and smiling at him. Harry supposed that his face must be a sight to see. “Lover.”  
  
And so Harry carried Draco across the threshold of the gates, and the threshold of the Manor. And once they were inside, it seemed only right that he should carry Draco across the threshold of his bedroom.  
  
Besides, so far Draco hadn’t shown any indication that he wanted to be let down. He leaned back in Harry’s arms and whistled a tuneless tune instead, his eyes locked on the ceiling of his own house as if he’d never seen it from this angle before. Maybe he hadn’t. Harry stifled the temptation to ask if there was a house-elf named Drunky who would put Draco to bed when he’d had too much Firewhisky.  
  
 _There probably isn’t. His name is probably Sleepy._  
  
Harry laid Draco on the marvelous bed that he must call silver. Then he stepped back. For long moments, he thought Draco was asleep. He lay there with his lips slightly parted and one hand curled near his ear, and his head turned a little to the side as if he would mouth at the hair falling across his face.  
  
Harry started to tiptoe out.  
  
“Ah. I knew you didn’t intend to stay faithful to me.”  
  
Harry snorted and turned around. “And I knew that you were putting on some sort of pose,” he retorted, coming up to the bed. “If you weren’t really asleep.”  
  
“But you doubted me.” Draco’s eyes were large and unblinking and fixed so hard on Harry that Harry was almost tempted to flinch from them. Honestly, though, this was nothing next to the craziness of finding out that Draco had apparently wanted to die. So he didn’t flinch, and Draco went on after a moment’s pause that probably wouldn’t have been noticeable to many people, except Harry. “I didn’t doubt you. I win.”  
  
“Win what?”  
  
When Draco got up on his knees and slinked towards Harry across the small space of bed that separated them, Harry thought he could guess. But he still stood there with his most doubting expression until Draco wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck, because doubting like that got him  _rewards_ , apparently.  
  
Then Draco started hauling him onto the bed. Harry thought about resisting for one second.  
  
It seemed to be a long second, but then he was on the bed and staring up at Draco, who hovered over him a bit predatorily.  
  
“I never thought I would have you here,” Draco breathed.  
  
Harry had been about to sit up and take off his clothes, but he paused. There was something new in Draco’s voice that he’d never heard before, even during all those times when they’d kissed before, the time when they’d almost come in each other’s hands, or when Draco was confessing about what kind of permission he had given Cassel to hex his broom. Harry would break the mood if he sat up now.  
  
He lay still, and tried to look as pretty as Draco had, and let it happen.  
  
“I sometimes thought that someone like you would be ideal for me,” Draco muttered, and Harry got a little impatient. He’d already said that, all that stuff about how Harry was strange and familiar at the same time. But then Draco touched his face and said something new. “Someone with your strength and your fire. You—made me consider things during school that I didn’t want to think about the time. But now I see that was important. I didn’t have Thinky around then to help me, and someone had to.”  
  
Harry firmly swallowed the bubble of laughter that was creeping up his throat, and blinked. Draco traced one finger around Harry’s eyes. It almost felt reverent.  
  
“And now you make me consider new things.” Draco shook his head a little, as if impatient with himself. “I still don’t really want to. But I have the impression that you won’t let me get away with doing that.”  
  
 _No, not really._ Although Harry had yet to figure out what exactly it was he had done that made Draco think. Taking him to the Leaky Cauldron? Arguing that he wouldn’t make a pretty corpse? He thought he could probably spend the rest of his life finding out, especially with Draco’s maddening tendency to change his mind on a moment’s notice.  
  
The thought made a shiver of desire tremble through him, and he moved a little. Draco hesitated. “Do you want to hear the rest?”  
  
“It’s nice to know you want me,” Harry said. “But I think we can get on to the consequences of the wanting.”  
  
Draco’s eyes blazed, and a new, raw expression appeared on his face. “Is it true that you’ve never been with a man before?”  
  
“I would assume you would know that,” Harry said. “After all, you probably follow the papers, and how much fun would they have had with  _that_ angle? Even if it was just something someone came up with in a pub.”  
  
“I know I can’t trust the papers when it comes to you,” Draco whispered. “I can’t trust anything but  _you_  when it comes to you.”  
  
Harry smiled. “It’s nice to know that you want to listen to me,” he whispered back, and kissed Draco instead of saying all the many things he could have. Saying those things would have been fun, but this was more fun.  
  
And as he felt Draco’s hands slipping under his shirt and up towards his shoulders, Harry finally realized exactly what kind of fun it was going to be.  
  
 _Different from being with a woman._ Harry told himself he knew that. He still gasped like a nervous teenager when Draco’s fingers found his nipples and pinched.  
  
Draco regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “No one’s done that to you before?”  
  
Harry felt as though someone had reached out and started painting his cheeks red. That was what it felt like, the blush so thick it couldn’t possibly be real. But he reminded himself Draco could have gone elsewhere if he wanted an experienced partner, and that Draco  _must_ know Harry would leave if Draco started making fun of him.  
  
“No,” he admitted, and then reached out and took his shirt off. Draco let him, his hands still skating lazy patterns on Harry’s chest.   
  
Then he pulled Harry down into a roll and kissed Harry from underneath him. Draco was lying on pillows that Pillowy had probably fluffed up, and Harry could feel his excitement coming back in waves.  
  
He wanted to see what Draco looked like naked when he  _wasn’t_ trying to seduce Harry and failing, so he yanked his shirt off. Draco hissed. “That burns when you take it off like that,” he complained.  
  
“Let me give you something else to think about,” Harry said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his—but a month ago, he wouldn’t have thought  _he_ would be like this—and leaned down to fasten his mouth around one of Draco’s nipples. Draco arched up in return, and Harry grinned.  _At least I’m not the only sensitive one._  
  
He liked the look of pleasure on Draco’s face. So he slid further down Draco’s body and took his trousers and pants off, and only had to stop sometimes when Draco pulled Harry’s head back up so he could kiss him. But then Harry bent down and breathed on Draco’s cock.  
  
Draco twitched and shouted. Harry grinned again. Draco’s cock was pink and smooth. Harry took it in a loose hold and smoothed his fingers up and down it.  
  
Draco grabbed his hair. Harry looked up at him. “ _Don’t_ tease me like that unless you’re going to suck it,” Draco panted.  
  
“Well, I might want to do that,” Harry said, and opened his mouth. He did pin Draco’s hips firmly on the bed with his hands, because he wouldn’t look very sexy if Draco suddenly thrust down his throat and Harry had to gag.  
  
 _I don’t know. He might be into that._  
  
Then Harry’s thoughts scattered, because he was rather preoccupied with the feeling of a cock going down his throat. It was still smooth, and difficult to open up his mouth enough. But then he started watching Draco’s face.  
  
Draco looked as if he was going to simply hurtle to a height and explode like a sunrise. His mouth was gaping like Harry’s, and he was surging against the hold Harry had on his hips, trying to thrust down his throat.  
  
 _He likes it!_  Satisfaction like syrup poured down on Harry’s head then, and he sucked and licked to let Draco experience some of it. Draco gasped and managed to get free of Harry’s hold to offer a good thrust. Harry, who was just starting to get used to the taste of intense salt and the feeling that something was blocking most of his air, gagged, coughed, and sat back.  
  
“Get  _down_ there—”  
  
Draco was snatching at Harry with wild hands. Harry dodged him and got his own trousers and pants part of the way off. Then Draco grabbed his neck and tried to drive his head downwards again.  
  
Harry resisted, mainly because he knew it would make Draco feel even better when he snaked a leg between Draco’s thighs to rub against his cock. Draco’s mouth fell open again, and so did his head, tumbling backwards until his hair was splayed across the pillow. He pulled in enough air to sound like it hurt, and Harry bent down and kissed him, drawing in that air, still trying to take off the rest of his clothes with one hand and make sure that he could get in as much kissing as he wanted with the other.  
  
Draco drove up at him hard enough to bump chins, and rolled them around again so that this time he was the one on top. Harry, skin burning, wriggled impatiently.  
  
“Yes,” said Draco, hair hanging down and smile devilish. Harry wondered for a fleeting second if it was the smile other people had seen, the one that made them fall in love.  
  
But he didn’t have much time to think, because Draco reached down and  _pressed_ against him.  
  
 _It’s so simple,_ Harry thought, as he tossed his head back and gasped because his swollen throat made him feel like he was drowning.  _How can something so simple—_  
  
Draco rolled his hips, and reached down and grabbed Harry’s cock. Harry had a hand. He knew he had a hand, although at the moment it was hard to remember. He managed to move it. His fingers wrapped around Draco.  
  
The heat that gathered between them almost hurt Harry’s skin. The friction definitely did. But he didn’t want to stop. He rolled and groped Draco and felt as though his head hit something and bounced off, and Draco grabbed him back.  
  
The pleasure was unreal.  
  
Harry thought he had a pillow beneath his head. He thought he had Draco settled between his legs. But when he opened his eyes, Draco was lying off to the side and still palming him, and how had  _that_ happened?  
  
No time to be sure. No time to slow down, or Harry knew Draco wouldn’t find as much pleasure as he was. And that was unacceptable.  
  
He sped up the pace of his hand. Draco’s eyes closed and his hand stopped for a long second. Harry groaned. That  _hadn’t_ been something he’d counted on. He pressed closer, and Draco opened his eyes with a long gasp and went back to stroking him.  
  
At one time, Harry was sure, it would have been easy to look away. Now it wasn’t. Now he only glanced down when he took his hand away from Draco and spat on it to make things easier, because he was losing track at this point of the difference between his hand and the rest of his body. Everything burned.  
  
Draco spat in his own hand, and even knowing it would be good, Harry growled at him during the time he wasn’t touching him, because he wanted it back  _now_. And then Draco’s hand came back, and it was even better than Harry had thought.  
  
Tugging like that, gripping, watching each other’s slowly blinking eyes, they raced to the end. Harry felt himself leap over the edge, and the pleasure came back and spun him around. A few seconds later, he felt himself shudder, as if the pleasure had hit his body after his mind, and Draco was gasping and uttering half-smothered curses against Harry’s shoulder.  
  
Things slowed down after that. Harry let himself slump against the bed, Draco draped over him. They weren’t going anywhere or doing anything. There was no deadline. They could lie here and breathe.  
  
“Not bad for your first time with a man, was it?”  
  
“No, it was pretty good,” Harry muttered, and then winced and turned his head to the side. Incredible as it seemed, it had sounded like someone was Apparating into the bedroom. Harry wearily hoped that it wasn’t another disappointed lover. He wasn’t up to doing the whole disarm them-bind them-Stun them routine right now.  
  
But when he got his head out from between Draco’s shoulders, he saw that it was only a house-elf, who stared at them and wrung its hands for a second.  
  
“What?” Harry asked groggily. Most of the time, Draco’s elves didn’t seem to need permission for things. They just went ahead and performed the function he’d named them for.  
  
“Please, masters,” said the elf, and leaned to the side as if he was trying to look at Harry and Draco and not look at them at the same time. “Semeny is wanting to do his job.”  
  
Harry pulled back, picked up a pillow—although his arms felt so heavy that it was like watching someone else do the job—and whacked Draco over the head with it.  
  
It couldn’t have been a hard blow, since Harry was still recovering, but Draco cried out and tried to wrap his arms around his head anyway. “What was  _that_ for?” he moaned, watching Harry with a hurt eye from beneath a fringe of hair.  
  
“You couldn’t have named him  _Cleany_?”  
  
“Of course not.” Draco seemed to assume he had the scattered fragments of his dignity still intact. “Cleany handles the general cleaning.”  
  
Harry slumped back and put the pillow over his face. He didn’t watch the house-elf do the cleaning up. He didn’t listen to Draco crawling up to him and tugging on the pillow, telling him that Harry needed to talk to him.  
  
There were just certain things he wasn’t capable of dealing with right now.


	18. When It Was The Morning After

“You’re still here,” someone said into his ear, in a stunned voice.  
  
Harry turned his head and blinked. He had thought for a second that he would be somewhere else, that perhaps someone had kidnapped him when he was sleeping and carried him out of Malfoy Manor. It had happened before, and it was one of the reasons Harry always slept with his wand close at hand.  
  
But no, it was just Draco bending over him with his eyes so wide and shocked that Harry couldn’t resist. He lowered his voice to the point that Draco leaned down to hear him and said, “No, I think I’m a—  
  
“ _Ghost!_ ” he shouted, and Draco leaped entirely off the not-silver sheets and ended up crouched next to the bed, staring at him.  
  
Harry sat up and stretched, casually. He’d been curious about whether he would find Draco attractive when he wasn’t overwhelmed with desire, and he was pleased to see that he did. He wanted to reach over and press some of Draco’s skin so his chest scars stood out better, actually. Harry could start apologizing for them with his tongue.  
  
“You’re ridiculous,” Draco hissed. He slammed his hands flat on the bed, making Harry bounce but not much more, since the mattress was already so taut. Harry smiled at him, and Draco lowered his head and butted one of the pillows instead. “I meant—I didn’t think you would stay next to me because you would probably wake up, get upset that you had sex with a man, and leave.”  
  
“Draco.” Harry reached out and clasped his shoulders. “You need to know something.”  
  
“Yes? What?” Draco twisted to the side and looked at Harry’s hand as if he was expecting some kind of trick from that, too. Well, considering what Harry had done so far, he reckoned he couldn’t blame him.  
  
“You need to learn how to love yourself.”  
  
There was a long, long moment before Draco’s teeth met with a click. It was one of the most satisfying moments of Harry’s life.  
  
Then Draco shoved him back onto the bed and straddled him. That brought his scars a lot closer. Harry eyed them and felt himself stirring. That had happened before, of course, but it was interesting to know that, this time, if Draco moved just right, Harry’s erection would touch another erection, instead of the soft skin or breasts he was more used to touching.  
  
“Why didn’t you?” Draco pounded his hands beside Harry’s head this time. “Anyone else would have. Every time I think I’ve found someone I can really be with, it turns into this dream and fades away. And you’re—you need to understand. I thought you were straight. You said you were straight.”  
  
“Sort of short-sighted of you to try to make me into your fiancé, then,” Harry told him. He yawned. He had slept wonderfully, but one of the things that happened when he slept like that was that he would wake up and want to snuggle back into the blankets and sleep some more.  
  
“I wanted—I wanted you, and I didn’t care what I had to do to get it.”  
  
“Well.” Harry reached up and cradled Draco’s wrists. Draco was staring down at him with the same devastated, lost expression he seemed to think went with being honest, and Harry didn’t want him to wear it. He reached up and traced his fingers back and forth across Draco’s collarbone. “Right. Now you have me.”  
  
“What happens if you decide tomorrow that you like women and then walk away from me?”  
  
“I  _do_ still like women. The way that Cassel told me you did, too. Although maybe I shouldn’t trust her, since she turned out to be a crazy murderer.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “She was only a murderer on my orders. And I know that she would have come to rescue me herself before she would have let me fall to my death.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “How comforting.”  
  
“Listen to me. What guarantee  _do_ I have that you’re not going to leave me tomorrow for some Quidditch player who catches your eye?”  
  
“You’re the only Quidditch player who’s caught my eye in months. And I suppose that I can’t do anything that will make you more certain, except stay here and kiss you. Because, I promise you, I’m  _not_ about to do any sort of Unbreakable Vow nonsense. I know the kind of trouble that that got Snape into.”  
  
Draco still looked lost, and Harry reached up and kissed his collarbone and then rolled him back down on the bed. Draco went, but his grunts were forced, and he kept looking Harry in the eye, not even reacting when Harry ran his hand across Draco’s stomach.   
  
Annoyed, Harry finally ducked his head and traced his tongue across one of Draco’s scars the way he’d been envisioning. At least that made Draco jump as though someone had cast a lightning bolt at his arse. And he groped for Harry, and his hand was strong on the back of his neck, shoving him down.  
  
Because he felt like being contrary—he did most of the time, around Draco—Harry didn’t let Draco shove him down far enough to reach Draco’s cock. Instead, he ran his tongue consideringly along those silvery scars, and then used his teeth when his tongue no longer seemed enough. Draco fell back on the bed. Harry followed, using his hands on Draco’s hips now.  
  
It seemed to go on for a long time, as Harry learned all the different ways that those scars could taste, and Draco’s breathing became more rapid and shallow. When Harry drew back to consider him, he looked as though he’d run a few miles.  
  
“And I thought Quidditch players were in better shape,” Harry muttered, before diving back down.  
  
“I’m the Seeker, I don’t have to—”  
  
Then Draco gave a sound that Harry was going to tell him was a yowl later, because Harry’s mouth had found his cock this time.  
  
Harry was a little used to the taste and the feeling now, and he sucked carefully mostly because he thought Draco’s heart would explode if he didn’t. When he darted a cautious glance up, he saw Draco lying there with his lips parted and his eyes glazed.  
  
 _I did that to him. I did!_  
  
Harry felt the smallest of jumps in his chest. He hadn’t pictured that to himself before, or hadn’t admitted it. He was really as powerful as he had thought he was. He could affect Draco even if Draco affected him by making him angry or happy.  
  
It was so easy to suck Draco’s cock when he was watching the changes that happened to Draco’s face as a result. His jaw falling open and his eyes staring into the distance as though he expected someone to come down to him were funny. The way his hand touched Harry’s head and then latched onto the side of his neck was satisfying.  
  
But the way he moaned Harry’s name was tender.  
  
Harry found out he was good at sucking cock, and while it was a little embarrassing to know that was a talent he had, he thought it was even more embarrassing that he hadn’t known about it until now. Surely he should have found that out when he was a teenager or something, and then maybe he could have used a spell to lengthen his neck so he could suck his  _own_ cock.  
  
Draco made a pathetic noise, and Harry realized that he’d stopped sucking and let Draco’s cock just lie there in his mouth while he thought about that. He smiled and went back to licking and breathing gently on Draco, while he slid his hand down to wank himself.  
  
It didn’t take long after that. Draco arched his hips back and pulsed into Harry’s mouth; Harry felt himself follow in between one stroke and the next; and the minute that Draco slumped back and reached for him, Harry drew his wand and cast a certain specific spell.  
  
There was a muffled thump and a squeal even more pathetic than Draco’s. Draco blinked and looked around. “What did you do?”  
  
“Put up a ward around the room so that Semeny can’t get in,” Harry said firmly, and curled up next to Draco with his cheek resting on Draco’s shoulder.  
  
“What about Blankety? She’ll need to take care of the sheets and the other wet spots while we take a shower.”  
  
“A shower sounds nice. But later.”  
  
“What  _do_ you have against my house-elves, Harry?”  
  
Harry shook his head. There were some things—not as many as he’d once thought, but still plenty—that were too hard to explain to Draco. Besides, as long as the house-elves weren’t upset about their names or their functions, Harry thought he didn’t have to try too hard to explain.  
  
When Draco tried to talk about Semeny and Blankety again, though, Harry closed his eyes and faked snores. It was easy enough to lure Draco into sleeping beside him when he did that, it turned out.  
  
*  
  
“She’s confessed.”  
  
It was so far from the first thing Harry had expected to hear when he walked into his office that morning, he paused with one hand on the doorway and stared at Ron. Then he had to leap, because his teacup and his reports were both trying to fall everywhere.  
  
“She has,” Ron said, watching tolerantly. Harry gave him a dirty look, but Ron was blind to “Help me clean up” looks from everyone except Hermione. “Cassel admitted that she’d hexed Malfoy on his instructions—which can’t be a crime, because what can you do when someone is that crazy they  _tell_ you?—but she also sent those other notes to the lovers he had before you, pretending to be Malfoy. She thought you were a dangerous rival, and she wanted you dead.”  
  
Harry shook his head and finally got his reports settled on the desk. At least the teacup hadn’t spilled more than a few drops on them, and they were easier to clean than the carpet. “I’m sorry for the Falcons. It’s going to be hard for them to find another Chaser.”  
  
Ron paused. “ _That’s_ the only thing you can think about?”  
  
Harry tried to hold onto his expression, but he burst out laughing a second later and put his hand up. “Yes, fine. I’m sorry. I was experimenting in seeing the world as Draco sees it for a little while.”  
  
“It’s disturbing,” Ron said, bowing his head with a shudder. “Don’t do that again.”  
  
“I’ll only do it around him,” Harry said. “Anyway. Thanks for telling me, Ron. I’ll go by and make sure that Kingsley doesn’t need me to sign any paperwork or interview anyone else.” There shouldn’t be much paperwork over the people he’d captured on Malfoy Manor’s grounds, he thought, because there had been direct evidence of wrongdoing there.  
  
“Um. So.”  
  
Harry looked up, wondering if Ron had another case he wanted Harry to work on, or knew something else about this one. “What?”  
  
Ron stood up, made his way to the door, shut it, locked it, cast the most powerful Silencing Charm on the gaps under it and around the keyhole that Harry knew, and then turned back and folded his arms. “Where did you go last night?”  
  
Harry flipped his eyebrows up and down.  
  
“Oh,  _honestly_.” Ron was staring at Harry as though he thought he had grown a second head and shoved it down his shirt collar. “You  _did_?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Yes. It turns out that I’m not as straight as I thought.”  
  
“But—how can you get  _used_ to that so fast? I mean, you weren’t even thinking about— _sex_ with Malfoy a little while ago and now you’re fine with it?”  
  
“Draco is so crazy that he makes it seem sane when you’re around him,” Harry said honestly. “But also, I really enjoyed myself, and it seems strange to decide that I’m never going to enjoy it again just because I was mistaken about only liking women.”  
  
“But that doesn’t mean you’re going to stay with Malfoy for the rest of your life.” Ron sounded like he was talking to someone about to jump out a window, and that person was himself. “Right?”  
  
Harry had to laugh. “Draco’s so unpredictable that I don’t know about that, either. Half of me thinks that we’ll break up tomorrow. Half of me thinks that we’ll stay together for sixty years and then he’ll ditch me for someone who plays Quidditch better.”  
  
“ _No one_ plays Quidditch better than you, mate.”  
  
Harry laughed again. He felt giddy. “Well, maybe that’s one reason he chose me over Cassel.”  
  
Ron paused, apparently realizing he’d been drawn into a serious discussion of Harry and Draco dating, or at least treating it as though it was serious. He spent a minute gazing off into the distance, then turned back. “You just need to tell me if you’re unhappy, and I’ll make sure I have a talk with Malfoy.”  
  
“I’ll tell you,” Harry said solemnly.  
  
 _If only because watching you try to threaten Draco into behaving better would get rid of whatever unhappiness I was experiencing right then._  
  
*  
  
“There’s one thing that we haven’t discussed,” said Draco, at dinner that night, when he had insisted that Harry leave the reports in his suite—well, their suite—and come down and eat around the table in the formal dining room without them.  
  
There was no huge elephant statue in the middle of this particular room, only a table and chairs polished until they looked like they were made of light. Harry had been a little disappointed.  
  
“You’re right,” said Harry, and leaned back from his plate, his stomach full and content with lobster-stuffed salmon and all sorts of green vegetables cut as thin as the chair legs and scattered all over them. “Why do all your house-elves have such bizarre names?”  
  
Draco had risen to his feet and was lifting his wineglass with a serious expression. The light slanting in through the enormous western windows shone through the glass and painted Draco’s cheeks and hair with shining beams of purple and red and orange.  
  
Draco almost dropped his glass in shock, and glared. “That  _can’t_  be what you think is important.”  
  
“Yes, it is. Blankety I might have accepted. Even Kitcheny. But Icy? And  _Semeny_?” Harry shook his head, then propped his chin up on his fist and put his elbow on the table precisely to see Draco’s eyebrow twitch. “Why not just have one house-elf for each room or general function in the Manor? And that would prevent me from ever having to think about Semeny again.”  
  
“You  _don’t_ need to think about my house-elves. They get their own food. They run the Manor efficiently. They’re one of the reasons I can offer you all this. What I mean is—”  
  
“But you name them like machines. They’re not machines. They’re living beings.”  
  
“Have you been listening to Granger again?” Draco sat down hard enough to make his wineglass ring off the edge of the table, and gave Harry another affronted look.   
  
“I always listen to Hermione,” Harry said. “She often has good ideas.” Not in the owl she’d sent him earlier that day, admittedly. She’d outlined all sorts of potions Draco could be slipping him that would make Harry think having sex with him was a good idea. Harry had read the list of potions, admired it, and then carefully burned the letter in case Draco ever saw it and got ideas.  
  
Draco shook his head. “You kept complaining that I would never be serious. I’m trying to have an important discussion with you at the moment. Will you  _please_ listen?”  
  
Harry bit his lip and bowed his head in penance, sitting there with as serious an expression as he could muster on his face.  
  
“Good,” Draco said, after an uncertain pause. “Listen. It’s about whether you’re going to be my fiancé or simply date me.”  
  
Harry leaned thoughtfully back in his chair. “What do you want?”  
  
“To have you.”  
  
Harry had to smile. “You can do that either way. Do you actually want the commitment of an engagement? Or is dating more to your liking? I mean, at least dating would be more flexible.”  
  
Draco abruptly gulped the remaining wine in his glass and moved towards Harry around the edge of the table. Harry sat up and stared.  _This_ was new.   
  
Draco came to him, pressing him back into the chair when he tried to rise, and got down on one knee in front of Harry. He didn’t try to touch him, and that made Harry tingle more than if he had. He watched Draco, aware that his own breathing was shallow, not caring that much about why.   
  
“I want you,” Draco whispered. “I want to see what else this can grow into. And I can’t  _believe_ that you weren’t dating someone before me, someone who would seize you and hold you for all the value you had.”  
  
“Hey, I’ve hardly been celibate. I’ve dated—”  
  
“But not lately. And yes, I did go back and look at what the editions of the  _Prophet_ had to say. I know you wouldn’t conceal a breakup. It’s been months, hasn’t it?”  
  
Harry tilted his head to concede the point.  
  
“Right.” Draco nodded slowly, then tilted his own head as if he wanted Harry to see the light at its best, glinting off his cheekbones. “So. I want to know if you can marry me, with a promise to become mine permanently.”  
  
“What’s the matter? Afraid someone else may snap me up now?”  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
Harry sat in silence after that word. Then he said, “I think I need to go home and think this over. Staying here is wonderful, but I can’t give you an answer while I do it.”  
  
Draco’s mouth tightened as if he thought Harry would go running off into the arms of a lover right then. But he stood up and nodded. “All right. I’ll do my best not to Floo or owl you tomorrow.”  
  
“I’ll come tomorrow evening,” Harry said, and kissed him once before he turned away.  
  
He had a decision to make.


	19. Who, What, Why, How, Where, and When

Harry sat in his own bed, where it felt as if he hadn’t spent significant time in months, and watched the stars outside his window. He’d never been a huge fan of Astronomy when he was at Hogwarts, but now that he had his own home away from the lights of a Muggle city, he liked looking into the night sky.  
  
He thought how complex all that was. All those suns millions of miles away, according to Muggle science. But according to wizarding logic, they still had influence on magic and even the future, if you looked at the connections between Astronomy and Divination that Professor Sinistra had never taught them to delve into.  
  
But it was still less complex than the state of affairs between him and Draco.  
  
 _Well, okay,_ Harry had to admit after a moment.  _Maybe not the millions of miles and the influence on magic thing._  
  
But he did know that he’d probably never be able to accept a lover who would test his love by asking Harry to let him die. Or who thought leaping over balconies was an actual, important thing Harry wished to do often. Or who proposed to him on their first date.  
  
Then again, he hadn’t thought he could accept a man, either. Or a Malfoy. And he had.  
  
Harry lay back on the window seat, cast a Cushioning Charm that sadly didn’t make the window seat compare to even some of the chairs in the anterooms at Malfoy Manor, and contemplated the stars again. How much could he change? Was it even fair to ask Draco to change?  
  
Harry had had enormous fun living in Draco’s world, taunting and baiting people as an ordinary thing. But could that really last forever? Would it be good enough if he adopted some of Draco’s manner?  
  
 _I can be teasing and haughty like he can, even if it’s just for a while. But I don’t know how serious he is. Was tonight enough of a glimpse of that?_  
  
Harry thought about things, and nodded slowly. His own test, in a way, except that he would tell Draco what he was doing, and Draco could decide whether he wanted to do it or not. And it wouldn’t involve anyone dying.  
  
 _For that alone, it’s better than what Draco was trying,_ Harry decided, and turned, in a considerably more cheerful mood, to contemplating whether he wanted to date Draco or be married. But in the end, he shook his head. Too much would depend on the outcome of this test.  
  
 _And let’s see what Draco does when I explain it to him._  
  
*  
  
Draco sat there with his mouth gaping open ungracefully, was what he did. Harry waited a little while, just in case Gapey popped in to remind his master he was catching flies, and then reached out and waved a hand in front of Draco’s eyes.  
  
Draco shut his jaw with a click. Then he turned away from Harry and sat on the not-silver bed, staring at the wall.  
  
Despite not seeing his face and not knowing him that well, though, Harry knew he was still upset. For one thing, his fingers were  _wrinkling_ the sheets on the bed. In Draco terms, that was probably the equivalent of running around waving his arms and screaming.  
  
“I thought you said I was horrible for testing my lovers,” Draco finally murmured, not turning around. “Why would you want the same thing to happen? Why would you want to do this to me?” He looked at Harry again, and his expression would have melted a heart of stone.   
  
Luckily, Harry had taken his heart of stone out that morning and replaced it with a diamond one. “I thought I would see whether you can really be serious for a few seconds,” he responded calmly. “Or a minute. It depends on how long it takes you to say.”  
  
“It’s still a test. It’s still not something you should do to someone you love.”  
  
“But at the moment, you’re not someone I love. You’re someone I like a lot and someone I’m attracted to. This is part of the process of seeing if you can ever become more than that to me.”  
  
Again Draco closed his mouth with a snap. Again he bowed his head. Harry waited. He didn’t want Draco to be pressured into doing this, but on the other hand, if he didn’t want to do it, that would say a lot of things on its own about Draco and the—state of things between them.  
  
“If I do this,” Draco said, without looking up, “then I want something in return.”  
  
“You  _will_ get something,” said Harry, a little surprised Draco didn’t understand that. “You’ll get me.”  
  
“No. I mean. I want a promise.” Draco rocked back on his heels, and having him face Harry was at least better than having him kneel there with his head bowed and tension written all over his body, although Harry still couldn’t say that he would be able to grant Draco’s request. “I want you to promise you’ll at least consider marrying me someday, no matter how long it takes you to come to the conclusion that you want to.”  
  
Harry thought carefully about that. It was less restrictive than the sort of thing he had  _thought_ Draco would say at first. Then he asked, “And what if it turns out that, when you’re serious, I don’t like you? That you want all sorts of things I don’t want? That I decide we’re not compatible after all?”  
  
“Not  _compatible_?”  
  
“I’m not talking about sexually. Yeah, I know there we’re more than good. I mean that I might not like you for your personality.”  
  
“But I like you for  _yours_.”  
  
 _Part of the problem is that he doesn’t understand why there’s a problem at all,_ Harry thought, and sighed a little. “Listen, Draco. I just need to know more about you, and that means I need you to be serious and call up all the seriousness that you can muster for this. Please?” he added when Draco opened his mouth again.  
  
Draco was silent, playing with the sheets some more. Then he nodded. “I want you to consider marrying me if you like what I say.”  
  
“Done.”  
  
Draco stared at him. Then he sat back and said, “What do you want me to be serious about?”  
  
“I want to know,” Harry said, “the answers to two questions. Why you tested your lovers the way you did. And why you proposed to  _me_ the way you did. Why it was me and not someone else,” he added, when Draco started to speak. “I think I know why you were proposing in general.”  
  
Draco’s fingers smoothed out and then lay straight again. Harry could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, so loud that it sounded like the buzzing of dragonflies.  
  
“All right,” said Draco abruptly. “I’m lonely. I know exactly who I am and what I like, but I feel like I can’t trust anyone else to know it. And every time I try to explain it to them, they don’t understand. You know, the way you didn’t when I tried to explain to you.”  
  
He glared at Harry in challenge. Harry kept silent, but, silently, he was thinking that it was partially because Draco’s explanations could use some work.  
  
“I know what I want.” Draco sat back some more, until Harry thought he was in danger of falling off the bed. “And I’d given up on finding it. But then I found it in you. The same mixture of fire and familiarity that I told you about. And I think you’re handsome, and I’ve  _more_ than proven that.”  
  
Harry had to nod.  
  
“I wanted to hold onto you. I thought, if I proposed, then it would either turn into a long-term thing and you would stay, or you would be intrigued enough to go along with it at first.” Draco darted him another glance. “You were.”  
  
“You had to have known that nothing permanent would come out of it. You  _had_ to.”  
  
“You think everyone’s mind works exactly like yours. You think everyone’s like an Auror and thinks about who’s dangerous and the long-term consequences of their actions all the time.  _I_ just wanted someone who would stay with me and love me. I tested people to see if they could. And I grabbed you because you had all the best qualities. You were the best prospect.”  
  
Harry considered that carefully. He wondered if he should be flattered or not.  
  
But Draco  _had_ stayed serious for longer than Harry had thought he would. And that meant he owed Draco the grace of considering his proposal seriously. He nodded once. “Then it was about me, not just about  _someone_.”  
  
“I don’t understand you.”  
  
Harry looked Draco in the eye. “You were looking for someone who fit your criteria. You said that. You implied you would have grabbed anyone who came along. Is that supposed to make me feel special? But if it was more about me, myself…”  
  
Draco worked his fingers in and out. “It was—I might not have known it was about  _you,_ consciously. I wasn’t sitting around pining for you and wondering what it would take to get you to notice me.”  
  
Harry had to snort. “I  _hope_ not.”  
  
Draco gave him a faint smile and looked away, his fingers curling down hard again. “But when I saw you, then I knew that, if it worked out the way I wanted it to, it could be wonderful. Of course, it almost immediately didn’t start working out the way I wanted it to. I’m sorry for that. I was thinking more about the dream when you tried to hand the ring back to me.”  
  
“Well, if you’d just accepted the ring and decided to say nothing more about it, we wouldn’t be sitting here now.”  
  
“Why did you come back?”  
  
“Because Kingsley assigned me to the case.”  
  
“Nothing to do with  _me_ , then.”   
  
Draco’s tone of bitterness was understandable, Harry thought, even if it also made him want to snap back. He reached out and picked up Draco’s hand, kissing the backs of his knuckles gently. Draco relaxed long enough to look at him.  
  
“Not at first,” Harry said gently. “It is now. There’s no way I would still be here and asking you to be serious and tell me what you really thought if it wasn’t about you.”  
  
Draco nodded slowly. “I know you’re not here for my wealth. You have your own. And you’re not impressed with my fame—”  
  
“With  _any_ fame,” Harry thought he had to correct him. “If you think dating me is going to get you more into the public eye for any reason, you need to drop that notion, too. I try and hide my relationships when I can.”  
  
“It won’t be hidden,” Draco said, his eyes narrowing. “I won’t have everyone running around believing rumors about a supposed breakup or anything like that. You’ll support me, and I’ll support you.  
  
“As for needing the fame, I’m famous enough on my  _own_. And the instant I win an important game, I’ll be all over the front pages again. You don’t need to worry about that.”  
  
Harry smiled at him, charmed in a strange way. He wouldn’t find that kind of attitude charming in most of the other people who had tried to date him, he knew. Then again, he didn’t think he had  _known_ those people as well as he knew Draco, both the good and bad parts of him. He nodded and asked, “And you think you can make the people who want to do things like break into my bedroom to take pictures back off?”  
  
“Of course.” Draco squinted at him a little. “So could you, if you were just more willing to use force.”  
  
Harry grimaced a little. “Don’t break anyone’s limbs.”  
  
“Broken noses and Suffocation Hexes are appropriate?”  
  
“Suffocation Hexes are Dark magic.”  
  
“No, they’re not. And anyway, they don’t show up if you cast the right sort of protection spells on your windows.”  
  
Harry gave in and laughed. Draco leaned forwards to kiss him in response. Harry snickered behind his hand as he imagined the faces of some of the reporters if they tried to climb in his windows  _now_ , but dropped it and leaned in eagerly to kiss Draco some more because damn, this was better than snickering.  
  
“Now I think I know why you showed up in all the papers so often,” Draco murmured when their mouths had parted. “You weren’t sufficiently ruthless, even though you could have been, or hired someone to be for you.” He paused, his eyes shining in a way that Harry had already learned to be wary of. “Or perhaps you  _wanted_ the attention? Part of you. You didn’t want to be so ruthless they would stop talking about you.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous, Draco—”  
  
Draco kissed him again and bore him down on the bed. Then he murmured into his lips, “Probably. But it’s a thought. And now I’ll be there to be as ruthless as you really can’t, and in the meantime, you’ll get to be ruthless in turn.”  
  
“Don’t tell me you have  _more_ enemies attacking your wards that you need me to send off.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I want you to fuck me,” he said casually, and reached for his wand. “And not with your mouth.  _Do_ close your jaw before it falls off.”  
  
*  
  
“I still can’t believe I’m doing this,” Harry’s mouth said, for probably the eighth or ninth time. He thought it was working on its own, by now. He couldn’t believe it, and he also couldn’t take his eyes off Draco’s arse. Of course, since Draco was spread out on his stomach on the bed, and with some pillows beneath his hips to prop them up, it pretty much filled Harry’s field of vision.  
  
“I knew my arse was unbelievable,” Draco murmured into the pillow. “But I had no idea it was  _literally_ that way.”  
  
Harry licked his lips and tried to pretend that he hadn’t already filled his hands and Draco’s hole with way too much lube. On the other hand, he had never done this before. He said that, too.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “I think even Cellary knows by now.”  
  
“Let me guess. He’s the elf in charge of the wine cellars.”  
  
“No, he’s in charge of making cellars out of the dungeons and getting rid of all the traces the Dark Lord left in our  _real_ cellars during the war.” Draco lifted his hips and wriggled that unbelievable arse when Harry paused. “I don’t hear the squeaking, Harry.”  
  
Obediently, Harry rubbed his hands over each other again. The lube squeaked in his palms. It meant, among other things, that he didn’t have to think about crazily-named house-elves.  
  
“Now,” Draco whispered abruptly, hunching his shoulders and looking at Harry over one of them.  
  
Harry nodded slowly. He had also smeared his cock with so much wetness that it looked as if he had already come. He had to do something soon, or he would simply kneel here for the rest of his life rubbing lube between his hands and worrying about whether it was enough.  
  
Then, of course, he thought it wasn’t enough again when he started to actually slide  _into_ Draco. Merlin, his cock was so big and Draco’s hole was so small—  
  
“I suppose I have to do things on my own here. The same way I so often have to catch the Snitch to win the game on my own.”  
  
Harry didn’t have time to ask what Draco was talking about before he jammed his arse back and onto Harry’s cock. Except he missed, and slid a little along the bed, with Harry sliding helplessly with him on the slick lube, half-in and half-out. Harry finally grabbed Draco’s hips—a non-slippery place—and adjusted himself into proper fucking position.  
  
At least, he thought it was. He had to admit he had no idea, and maybe, for all he knew right now, he was hurting Draco.  
  
But from the way Draco was gasping and grunting,  _something_  was going right. Harry cautiously relaxed and fucked him some more. But then Draco turned his head over his shoulder and said, “You call that fucking?”  
  
“I don’t know what to call it,” Harry admitted, and moved some more. It felt—good? But from the impatient expression on Draco’s face, it could feel better.  
  
Draco wriggled and thrashed across the bed, back to the pile of pillows that he’d put under his hips at first. “Come  _here_ ,” he said over his shoulder. Harry had to get up on his knees and move a little, with Draco bossily telling him, “Left—now, you’ve got your knee over too far—right— _ouch_ , you arsehole—”  
  
But then Draco gasped and went boneless underneath him, and Harry reckoned something was finally going right. He relaxed and began to thrust in and out. It wasn’t that different to some of the times he’d been with a woman, he thought.  
  
Except that this was Draco, and he still complained non-stop. It just took him a little longer, because he had to get his breath, and apparently that was hard with Harry bouncing in and out of him.  
  
“Watch out—that’s good—that’s good, but—it could be—better—come on then—show me—what—what? What was—that? Come  _on_ —Harry!”  
  
That last bit, his name, was very nice, Harry decided. He wanted to make Draco do that again. He reached out and caught his cock, squeezing it gently. Then he thrust and squeezed at the same time. Would that be good?  
  
That was perfect, apparently, from the way that Draco abandoned himself to moans and sighs. He wasn’t even speaking anymore, just making happy noises into the blankets and pillows in front of him. Harry grinned and moved harder.  
  
 _Well, one way this is different from being with a woman._ It was harder work. Harry was used to spending less time than this, and less effort.  
  
But it was worth it when Draco abruptly started to his hands and knees and almost  _screamed_. Harry thrust harder. Draco reached back towards him, and Harry caught his hand once, but had to let it go because this was just too awkward.  
  
“ _Yes!_ ”  
  
Just that one cry, and then Draco came, with a shudder that made Harry feel all sorts of things around his cock that he’d never felt before. He swore and followed Draco, gripping hard enough that he saw bruises when he moved his hands. He had the distinct impression that he should feel worse about them than he did.  
  
Draco dropped face-down with one last shattering gasp. Harry followed him, but didn’t immediately go to sleep. For one thing, he liked to admire Draco’s relaxed face.  
  
For another, he still had to put up the spell that kept Semeny out.  
  
*  
  
“…And just for one day, joining the Falmouth Falcons as Chaser,  _Harry Potter!_ ”  
  
Harry could hear the explosion of cheers all over the pitch and from the stands. It didn’t matter, though. His attention was on the other players, the darting brooms, the Quaffle he would have to toss through the hoop and pass to the other players if he was going to be any good at all, and the Bludgers that would try to stop him.  
  
Well, and Draco, because it was impossible to be on the pitch when Draco was playing Quidditch and not pay attention to him.  
  
Harry could admire the way the uniform stretched across his shoulders, and maybe, more to the point when Draco bent over his broom to scan the air ahead for the Snitch, his arse. But he couldn’t get too distracted, because there were all those other things to worry about.  
  
Harry tossed the Quaffle to Anna Grey, one of the other Chasers, and spun out of the way of a Bludger. The one good thing about having “famous Harry Potter” on the Falcons’ team was that their opponents, the Wimbourne Wasps, decided they had to focus a lot of frantic attention on Harry, in case he did something outrageous and likely to win the game.  
  
But they still thought Harry was a Seeker. The Chasers pulled up to try and foul him the way they would a Seeker. The Beaters got ready to hit their Bludgers when Harry acted as if he was about to pull into a dive or take off for the far side of the pitch.  
  
None of them were prepared when Harry simply tilted back and grabbed the Quaffle from Grey, then tossed it to Jester, the third Falcon Chaser, then dropped into a smooth, curving dive that didn’t carry him very fast or far.  
  
“Potter’s seen the Snitch!” yelled the commentator, who didn’t understand some things despite the way he’d announced Harry.  
  
The Wasps’ Beaters immediately chased Harry, heating two Bludgers at him at once. The Falcons’ Beaters got in the way long enough to deflect one of them, but that still left another weaving through the brooms and aiming at the back of Harry’s head.  
  
The Wasps’ Chasers snapped their heads around after him. Their Keeper surged a little towards Harry, hesitated, flew back, then wobbled as he tilted his head back in an attempt to see whether the Snitch was above him and Harry’s dive just a distraction.  
  
No one seemed to notice as Jester soared directly at the hoop and threw the Quaffle through it three times, making up for the number of points the Falcons were behind. Then he fluttered up to a good distance above the hoop and threw the Quaffle with a spin behind it that Harry had advised him to use.  
  
Harry turned upside-down and soared through the confusing mass of air and brooms and players to catch the Quaffle between his legs. The Bludger chasing him hit the Falcons’ hoop and got batted away by their Keeper to stagger dizzily down towards the pitch.  
  
Harry turned and threw the Quaffle through the hoop at the exact moment as Draco, on the other side of the field, caught the Snitch with both hands.  
  
The cacophony of shouts after that was delirious and delicious and incomprehensible. Harry turned around to smile at Draco, and saw Draco move his hand in a certain way just as his robes went transparent.  
  
Transparent for Harry only, he was sure. He watched Draco touch his groin with the back of his hand, long and slow and soft-knuckled.  
  
Harry licked his lips and ignored the people asking him if he would stay and fill Cassel’s place until the Falcons could find another Chaser. He had something much more interesting to watch.   
  
And  _do,_ when they got home.  
  
 _I should probably find out if there’s a house-elf called Lubey._  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
